Joe’s good fortune, however, is based on a lie; a political mythology, as it were, deviously by the elite power brokers, that Joe was, and still is, a moderate and is therefore, the most electable Democrat out there. It cannot be based on the candidate’s unifying, optimistic, and patriotic vision for the future, because there is none. There are no reasonable, practical, and substantive ideas being proffered regarding freedom, liberty, prosperity, and security for the American people. On the contrary, the Harris-Biden candidacy is distinguished by a dark, overtly divisive, and destructive agenda, masked most days by shameless untruths and unrelenting criticism of President Trump. So much for empathy and unity.
Obama kiss of death? Ex-president set to campaign for Joe Biden
In another sign of Democrats acting as if maybe they aren't cruising to victory as polls claim, they're wheeling out former president Obama in a bid to put Biden over the top.
According to the New York Post:
Former President Barack Obama reportedly is poised to hit the campaign trail for Joe Biden, his former vice president, as the 2020 presidential race enters its crucial final stretch.
"President Obama plans to hit the trail soon, in addition to all the other activities he's undertaken all year in support of electing VP Biden — as he's said, we all have to do everything we can to win on November 3," an aide to Obama told ABC News.
That would be the same Obama who thus far has been absent from the campaign trail all these months, including even the past couple of weeks when Joe Biden has ventured out from his basement hideaway to zero crowds. Unlike Biden, Obama can draw a crowd, even if it's done with scrupulous social distancing, which is likely to be what they present for the fawning press cameras.
The guilt here is pretty obvious, too — note how that aide in the quote above made sure he slipped in that clause about "in addition to all the other activities he's undertaken all year in support of electing VP Joe Biden" as if Obama had done anything more than an occasional Zoom meeting. The Post continues:
"He's doing enough for our campaign," Biden told reporters on Tuesday, according to Fox News. "He'll be out on the trail and he's doing well."
This rather sounds as though Biden's been getting a few questions about this as he turns up for zero-crowd rallies at this late date within the campaign.
Recall also that Obama took a long time to endorse Biden for president, despite working with him at close quarters for eight long years. He endorsed Biden only when all the other candidates had bailed out and then he had to.
It calls to mind that Obama's contempt for Biden is very well known.
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up," Obama reportedly told another Democrat, as per Politico.
"You don't have to do this, Joe, you really don't," the New York Times reported Obama telling Biden ahead of his campaign announcement. The Daily Beast, writing in August 2019, put it this way:
According to the Times, "Mr. Biden — who thinks he could have defeated Donald Trump four years ago — responded by telling Mr. Obama he could never forgive himself if he turned down a second shot at Mr. Trump."
The Times also reported that Obama met with top Biden advisers in March and, according to the sources, requested that the ex-veep's team do what they can so that Biden does not "embarrass himself" or "damage his legacy."
There are countless other examples.
Besides that contempt, Joe Biden should be careful what he wishes for — Obama in fact has endorsed very few candidates who came up winners.
When Obama endorses some poor schmoe, the other guy tends to win.
According to Patriot Post, Obama campaigned for the following losing candidates:
Obama has a miserable record when it comes to electing anyone but himself. Whether he was trying to help some Democrat win a governorship or a Senate seat, Obama's record has been abominable. By now, he must be something like 0-40.
Heck, even campaigning with Michelle in Georgia, a state that is 31% black, the two of them couldn't get Stacey Abrams into the governor's mansion. Democrats would insist, as the Obamas and Ms. Abrams have been doing for the past two years, that she lost because of voter suppression. It's a tough argument to make because in a state with a population of 10,500,000 — 3,150,000 of whom are black — she received nearly two million votes. Her problem was that Brian Kemp received 55,000 more than her. It hardly seems like voter suppression when 74% of all registered voters, including blacks, cast votes in that election.
Charlie Spiering tweeted that actually, the list was pretty extended:
Obama campaigned for the following losing candidates:
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) November 7, 2018
Joe Donnelly
Richard Cordray
Andrew Gillum
Stacy Abrams
And it's far from all of them. Think of the various special elections where Obama's endorsed lost, too.
It's so bad that there are many Democratic candidates who don't want his endorsement at all.
And even Obama knows this, according to this 2018 piece in the Washington Examiner, holding off his endorsements of Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana for this very reason.
Biden should be careful what he wishes for. Not only will Obama's capacity to draw a crowd stand in stark contrast to his own miserable efforts, but Obama's presence will remind many of how little regard he had for Biden, too. But worst of all, Biden's gotten himself the great anti-Midas of the Democrats' campaign trail, given that everything he touches turns to something that isn't gold.
As the Obamatons say, let's hope.
Image credit: Eric Drost, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
So Joe Biden lied to us all along about knowing nothing of Hunter's influence-peddling
Joe Biden's corrupt, debauched, coke-addled son Hunter has been found to have sold access to his dad's office for tens of thousands of dollars. That's the obvious conclusion from a trove of emails with his name on them, showing him driving a hard bargain his his pay to play game, making sure he got paid up front. And Vice President Joe Biden, who's now running for president? He's been caught red handed, lying to us about not knowing a thing.
Because sure enough an abandoned computer has turned up, according to the New York Post, loaded with Hunter's emails, showing him promising to give corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs access to Joe for a price.
According to the Post:
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
The emails were discovered in a way that was about par for Hunter's character: Hunter apparently turned in his Apple MacBook Pro in to a repair shop in 2019, and then ran out on his tab, not bothering to pick the computer up after the technicians did the work, leaving the store in hock. The store owner tried to contact him, got ghosted, and then poked around, finding all kinds of evidence of political and personal sleaze on the device. Then he turned the matter over to the lawmen, but kept a copy of a hard drive, which the Post obtained.
Speaking of sleaze, there was also this:
Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.
Which rather suggests that the Russians or any number of bad actors might just have copies of the same, known in their world as Kompromat. That would allow them to squeeze Hunter, and quite possibly old Joe for whatever they wanted, just to keep the scuzzy reality from getting out.
Joe Biden, though, is the one who ought to be on the hottest of the hot seats: He's insisted for years that his son Hunter "did nothing wrong" and in any case, he never discussed business with Shakedown Junior, who often accompanied his dad on his foreign travels, following him around almost as if he black bag was outstretched.
The Post has that angle in this separate article here:
In the email, Hunter Biden wrote to Archer, “We need to ask for long term agreement and across the board participation. This is a huge step for us that could easily become very complicated. And if we are not protected financially regardless of the outcome we could find ourselves frozen out of a lot of current and future opportunities.
“The contract should begin now- not after the upcoming visit of my guy.
“That should include a retainer in the range of 25k p/m w/ additional fees where appropriate for more in depth work to go to BSF for our protection. Complete separate from our respective deals re board participation.”
And it turns out Joe knew all about it, as the Post reporting describes.
Which would also explain why Biden gets so touchy whenever the matter is brought up. The last person who brought it up directly with him was called: 'Hey, fat!' and challenged to a push-up contest.
Why this one should be let go, just as the coup attempt against President Trump has been allowed to go, and the pay to play corruption at the Clinton Foundation is quite a guess. But at some point this has to stop, and Hunter appears to be as good a place as any. Hunter sold the U.S. down the river for his own personal profit. And the Mister Big protecting him was none other than Joe Biden. It's time to roll this raw corruption up, starting with exposing Joe's lies and forcing to answer some questions.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM
THE FED'S OLD BOY NETWORK
By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of Tyranny" and
"Global Censorship of Health Information"
December 19, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, performed an enormous service for the American public when it sued the Federal Reserve and the Clearing House Association LLC, an institution created by several of the nation’s largest banks, to force disclosure of secret loans made by the Federal Reserve principally to the six largest U.S. banks but also to certain foreign banks. The treasure trove of evidence ultimately obtained by Bloomberg reveals that while the public Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailed out leading Wall Street firms for the whopping sum of $700 billion, the Fed at the same time doled out some $7.77 trillion (an astronomical sum equal to have the gross domestic product). To make matters worse, the Fed expanded its emergency discount lending program, giving tens of billions more to the same banks at an interest rate of 1%, while the prime lending rate stood at over 3%. The banks getting these funds often turned them into profit centers, lending out proceeds from them at higher interest rates and pocketing the difference, profiting on federal largesse.
The President and his top economic advisers bought the “too big to fail” concept, the notion that regardless of how profligate, irresponsible, even criminal, heads of the leading financial institutions in America had been, it would be worse for the nation if those institutions were to collapse. Consequently, while pushing a legislative agenda of public bail-outs, the Obama Administration maintained a secret program of multi-trillion dollar loans, including billions at below market interest rates. The principal recipients of the funding were JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
The General Accounting Office audit of the Federal Reserve revealed that some $16 trillion was supplied in secret loans from the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The largest single recipients were Citigroup ($2.5 trillion); Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion); Merrill Lynch ($2 trillion); Bank of America ($1.3 trillion); Barclays PLC ($868 billion); Bear Stearns ($853 billion); Goldman Sachs ($814 billion); the Royal Bank of Scotland ($541 billion); JP Morgan Chase ($391 billion); and Deutsche Bank ($354 billion).
Bloomberg discovered that while top banks were touting in their press releases during the crisis that they had fiscal soundness, their balance sheets were made up primarily of federal funds, most from the Federal Reserve. Moreover, while many banks paid back the TARP funds, they most often did so in reliance on the secret receipts of tens of billions of dollars in Federal Reserve money (in other words, the pay back was in that sense a charade: federal money paid back federal loans). In short, the Administration was complicit in the orchestration of a massive fraud on the American public, making it seem that the banks largely responsible for the financial crisis were weathering the storm of their own accord when in fact they were on board the good ship U.S. Taxpayer.
Meanwhile, the bad lending and financial dealing practices that helped produce the financial crisis have been largely kept in place, underwritten by the federal government. The top banks suddenly realized that far from having to suffer ignominy and defeat for their abuses, they would be kept alive by a seemingly endless flow of federal cash. Indeed, the feds accepted as collateral for loans securities of virtually no worth and other properties that would never support private commercial lending. By propping up the major banks despite their irresponsible lending practices, the federal government has given them a privileged financial status whereby private lenders will give them terms far more favorable than their smaller competitors because they understand the federal government will not let them fail. Economist call this safety net a “moral hazard” (effective federal underwriting for heightened risk taking that permits these lenders to profit at above market rates of return in speculative investing without suffering financial liability for loss). The amounts doled out by the federal government to the banks could have paid off as much as one tenth of all of the delinquent mortgages, Bloomberg determined.
Rather than be forced to take their losses on their enormous junk portfolios and interbank lending practices, the top six banks were allowed to keep the junk portfolios, maintain their dubious lending practices, and turn to the Federal Reserve for money on demand whenever problems arose. Repeatedly when the banks should have gone under due to poor lending practices and grossly speculative profiteering, they were complimented by the Federal Reserve, rescued, and then allowed to tout the falsehood that their success came from sharp management rather than from secret loans. At the same time, these banks and others have shut down commercial lending for small businesses nationwide.
The “too big to fail” justification for the massive federal welfare dole to the top six United States banks was based on a faulty premise. Without question the demise of the leading banks would entail hardship, particularly for the employees of those institutions, but the long term prognosis was good for a restructuring of the financial market through bankruptcies and takeovers. The alternative to allowing the market to impose its own swift and harsh corrective involves imposing a massive burden on every American citizen for generations to come for the trillions spent to prop up a few dozen Wall Street moguls. Rather than have the taxpayers pay an inflated sum to keep the banks responsible for the financial crisis alive, the nation could have spared itself an assumption of massive debt and witnessed the demise of these banks and the rise of new competing financial institutions based on a solid financial model.
The Bush and Obama Administration’s role as Santa Claus for Wall Street has kept from Wall Street the needed lessons that would have otherwise come from the collapse of the major lending institutions. Painful as it may seem to some, it is far better to allow the market to experience a correction for profligate lending practices than to force the American taxpayers for generations to come to pay for the bad decisions made by a few and to let those few go without suffering a single consequence beyond temporary embarrassment.
In the two years since leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the US.
Just last month, Obama was reported to have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá, Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post, EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in its public sector and military, which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent to 5.3 percent of its GDP.
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its drug cartels have been known to have a hand in the government. Corruption and drug money are so rampant that Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality” in his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72 times the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite, who have welcomed him with open arms.
In the two years since leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the US.
Just last month, Obama was reported to have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá, Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post, EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in its public sector and military,
which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent to 5.3 percent of its GDP.
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its drug cartels have been known
to have a hand in the government. Corruption and drug money are so rampant that
Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality” in his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72 times the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite, who have welcomed him with open arms.
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years."
MATTHEW VADUM
BARACK Hussein OBAMA: THE CLOSET MUSLIM PSYCHOPATH WHO HATED AMERICA!
"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/02/monica-showalter-barack-obama-proud.html
The mullahs rolled in cash as a result of rolling Obama and his gullible team over the deal, knowing that Obama was desperate for some sort of legacy.
MONICA SHOWALTER
MUSLIM DICTATORS, INCLUDING THE 9-11 INVADING SAUDIS, FUNDED THE PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES OF BUSH, CLINTON and OBAMA!
ISLAMIST BARACK OBAMA
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/01/barack-obama-and-racist-anti-semitic.html
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM
"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these." MONICA SHOWALTER
"Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
OBAMA AND HIS SAUDIS PAYMASTERS… Did he serve them well?
Malia, Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/malia-michelle-barack-and-college.html
Michelle was the next to attend Harvard, in her case Harvard Law School. “Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades weren’t good enough for an Ivy League school,” writes Christopher Andersen in Barack and Michelle, “Michelle applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway.”
GOOGLE WHAT THE OBOMB DID FOR HIS SAUDIS PAYMASTERS
Barack Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before prosecutors send some of the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their dimness, they might want to ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire peddled to get Obama into Harvard.
A Radical Shift
The nightmare Obama brought to U.S. foreign policy.
Editors' note: Walid Phares has a new book out on the difference in foreign policy between Obama and Trump titled: The Choice: Trump vs. Obama-Biden in US Foreign Policy. Below is an exclusive excerpt - Chapter 3 - which illustrates the nightmare that Obama brought to U.S. foreign policy.
Soon after landing in the White House, President Obama initiated two major moves, which by the end of May or early June 2009 indicated where his administration was going in terms of national security and foreign policy. It was obvious to me at the time that the country was veering away from the post-9/11 posture and the so-called War on Terror and heading in the opposite direction of demobilization of America on the one hand and the activation of an apologist policy on the other in order to engage with future partners who were actually at the core of terrorism and extremism.
Most Americans in the early years of the Obama administration focused on the domestic agenda and therefore did not see or understand the much wider change of direction that the new team at the White House was implementing: the eventual dismantling of the War on Terror and with it the war of ideas. In other words, the Obama doctrine was telling Americans that our conflict with the radicals overseas was in error because the conflict was caused by us—and therefore we need not only to cease our efforts of resistance against the jihadists, Iran, and the other radicals but jump on a train going in the other direction, one that would lead us to engaging the foes and finding agreement with each of them in order to transform American policy overseas.
The first major benchmark that indicated a massive Obama-Biden change in foreign policy with implications on national security was Obama’s trip to Egypt in spring 2009 and his address at Cairo University. The main idea of President Obama on the political philosophy level was to inform the American public that the United States has been seen as an aggressor against Arabs and Muslims since 9/11—maybe even decades before that. This perception prevailed on U.S. campuses for decades among leftist academics and intellectuals. It was explained as the American branch of Western colonialism. But the urgency behind this U-turn made by the administration in foreign policy perception was in fact linked to how the United States reacted to the 9/11 attacks.
In my own experiences after the 2001 jihadist strikes against New York, D.C., and elsewhere, the immediate reaction after al-Qaeda suicide missions on American soil was explained by a combination of Far Left and neo-Marxist circles actually accusing the United States of provoking the attacks. During the seven years of the Bush administration, both the Islamist lobbies and their Red allies in America were organizing to oppose any form of American self-defense and thus did oppose both the war in Afghanistan and the one in Iraq while also framing them as neocolonialist conquests.
It was imperative for the Obama team to change the national security doctrine that had been approved by a unanimous and bipartisan 9/11 Commission to align with their own narrative. The reality was that for years, before the Obama victory in 2008, a new alliance was being forged between the Islamists in general (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Khomeinist Iranians in particular) and the core left-wing neo-Marxists within the West in general (and the United States in particular). The Obama group belonged to that core—a subset found mostly on campuses but also in parts of the media.
With the alliance already in place, it made sense for the new administration to unleash its plans as early as possible. Hence, Obama’s 2009 address in Cairo was essentially an open invitation through public acknowledgment of his desire for a partnership between his administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. Though Egypt was ruled by authoritarian President Mubarak, Obama’s visit and his praise of the Ikhwan talking points were the opening salvo of a campaign designed to crumble the Egyptian regime and, later, other Arab governments—and replace them with the Brotherhood. The genesis of the Islamization of the Arab Spring of 2011 thus started in 2009.
The Obama speech at Cairo University, in fact, officialized a partnership between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood, and in general terms with the Islamist movements in the MENA region. One might think that such a move would be checked by the mainstream Republican Party in D.C., but it was not—due to the equal impact of the Qatar and Islamist lobbies on the Republican institution. It did, however, unnerve the conservative sectors of the Republicans both in Congress and in the grassroots while also putting pressure on the traditional liberals in the Democratic Party after the ilk of Joe Lieberman and others.
The major shift towards engaging the Islamists worldwide also opened the door for partnerships with their lobbies and NGOs inside the United States. This led to an unstoppable rise of influence of militant groups such as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which in turn became the spearhead of a campaign to silence the critics against Obama’s new policies in Congress and in the media.
But a shift to align with the Muslim Brotherhood was not the only onslaught of the Obama administration in foreign policy; it was simply the first one. Indeed, in the same month of June 2009, President Obama engaged in a second track that would change another U.S. national security policy, one that was established in the early 1980s: the containment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In early June 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a letter to the Grand Ayatollah of Iran, Imam Ali Khamenei, calling on him to begin a new era of cooperation between Tehran and Washington. That letter, which was as apologist as the speech to the Muslim Brotherhood weeks earlier in Cairo, signaled the beginning of a long process that would lead to the negotiation and signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. But June 2009 had one more surprise that revealed a third shocking policy shift, one that would divert the country from its longstanding tradition of helping nations facing oppression and seeking freedom.
Indeed, America, in one century—between the First World War, the Second World War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union—had demonstrated its commitment, through blood and treasure, to stand by peoples on many continents as they had been brutalized and oppressed—from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and Latin America. But the events in Iran at the end of June 2009 signaled a drastic third policy change. Millions of Iranians, including many women, took to the streets to protest the suppression by the regime. Many of these protesters held signs in English—one of which called on President Obama by name to help them. Yet to reaffirm that the U.S. would not “meddle” in Iranian politics or stand with the democratic revolution in Iran, a second letter was sent to Khamenei on September 3.
The abandonment by the Obama administration of the Green Revolution in Iran was the benchmark that told me that the American policy of supporting freedom fighters and people’s uprisings against totalitarian governments, the praise for dissidents, and the backing of free societies around the world had ended.
2009 was the year that broke the backbone of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy and rebuilt it into a radical approach inconsistent with the feelings and perceptions of the majority of Americans. Yet most Americans were not informed and educated enough, particularly by their academia and media, to correct such radicalization of policy via their members of Congress—or to elect a new president who would change directions one more time to align policy to once again be consistent with U.S. national security and traditional American liberty principles.
Fears for the Future
Both the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005 and the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 provided indications that peoples in the region had reached critical mass in regard to their tolerance for authoritarians and would eventually protest and demand change. Social media has also evolved and has become much more accessible by ordinary people. In my book The Coming Revolution, I predicted that most countries in the Arab world were going to witness social and political unrests, results I had been waiting for, for many years, to push back against the extremists.
I briefed many members of Congress during that same period of time and convinced them that there were authentic forces of change in the region, including seculars, women, and minorities, and that the United States should immediately partner with them as the authoritarian leaders were going down—and fighting a lost battle to support ailing dictators would not be the right battle for the United States.
My concern was that the moment would be squandered as the Obama administration was racing to connect with the Islamists and the Iranians in the region and thus diverting the resources of the U.S. government to the wrong factions instead of helping civil society forces. I observed how the lobbies of our traditional foes were moving with great speed at all levels within the bureaucracies and the administration. I was also receiving many complaints from Middle East human rights and minorities groups that officials and governments were no longer engaging them like the Bush administration had tried to do. In addition, members of Congress in the Republican opposition (who won the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010) were sharing their fears that the administration had abandoned our allies in the region, not just allies among Middle East minorities, but also Israel. So by the end of 2009, early 2010, I could see the whole picture, and it was a dark and dire one.
Professor Walid Phares served as a Foreign Policy Advisor to Presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. He also served as a National Security Advisor to Presidential Advisor Mitt Romney in 2011-2012. Professor Phares has been an advisor to the US House of Representatives Caucus on Counter Terrorism since 2007 and is the Co-Secretary General of the Trans-Atlantic Legislative Group on Counter Terrorism since 2008. He is also a Fox News National Security and Foreign Affairs expert.
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