Barack Obama: Presidential Subject Change

His Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservatives. His Justice Department has been spying on reporters and stealing their phone records and emails. His State Department has been fabricating intelligence and obstructing Congress. And his Health and Human Services director has been shaking down companies and nonprofits to help fund his socialized medicine law.

Oh, and all of these scandals broke (or in the case of Benghazi, reached a point of critical mass) this month.

Needless to say, U.S. President Barack Obama has been floundering … in need of something (anything) to draw attention away from the multiple scandals swirling around his administration. And what better way to do that than declaring victory in the “War on Terror,” which he has prosecuted every bit as vigorously (and expensively) as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

“Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat,” Obama said in a major national security address at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. “Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They’ve not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11. Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al Qaeda affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse, with Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula — AQAP — the most active in plotting against our homeland.”

So that’s Obama’s current world view … what is his specific plan to deal with it?

“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” Obama said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

Nice … so on a random spring day, Obama has decided the “War on Terror” should end – victoriously – even as it continues, undefined.

“America is at a crossroads,” Obama added. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.”

Okay … so does that mean the tens of thousands of American troops currently fighting without a purpose (or an exit strategy) in Afghanistan will be coming home?

Obama didn’t say …

Despite his lack of specificity (and the not-so-curious timing of his remarks), limited government advocates found some of his rhetoric commendable.

“The president’s effort to put the terrorism threat in context and his argument that the war cannot be unlimited and unending are praiseworthy, as is his mention of ultimately repealing the authorization for use of military force,” wrote Benjamin Friedman of The Cato Institute.

The authorization – passed by Congress on September 14, 2001 – gave U.S. presidents the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those deemed to have “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

We agree with Friedman – it should be scrapped.

“That said, he still claims almost unlimited war powers based on secret legal reasoning,” Friedman added. “He still has not told us what countries and groups he claims authority to attack in the name of counterterrorism, or his administration’s legal rationale for doing so.”

And that – along with the influence of war-mongering “Republicans” like John McCain and Lindsey Graham – is why America’s foreign policy remains so dangerously unaccountable.

Not just abroad … but here at home, where American citizens can be spied on, indefinitely detained and droned to death in violation of their constitutional liberties.

“America has lost the War on Terror in every way imaginable – the body count, the financial cost and the irreparable loss of our fundamental liberties,” we wrote on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

No “victory speech” is going to change that …

What do you think? Vote in our poll and post your thoughts in our comments section below …

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