myerstownherald.com

President Obama’s first 100 days in office have been a big disappointment. The general misdirection of his administration was heightened when Obama sank to a new low by releasing classified memos this past week that detail CIA interrogations of terrorists. This move has aligned Obama forever with the far, far left of the country. His conduct is shameful and hurts those who are trying to protect the country.
So far, much of what has been wrong with Obama’s administration focuses on fiscal policy. He has plans in place to spend trillions of dollars that the United States simply does not have, placing the country in a precarious financial position where we would be completely at the mercy of any creditor who accepts our debts.
This past week, however, Obama’s foreign policy has nosedived from being weak and conciliatory to being downright dangerous.
Releasing memos of how the CIA interrogated terrorists will help those people who are trying to harm the United States. Our enemies will know what we will do to obtain information, and they can plan on how to avoid giving information that could help keep Americans safe. Additionally, by releasing the memos, Obama is casting aspersions on those who tried to prevent future attacks on the United States.
Even worse than the release of the classified memos, however, is Obama’s refusal to rule out prosecuting members of President Bush’s Administration for ordering enhanced interrogations. The objective of the Bush Administration was to keep American safe, and the interrogations led to information that accomplished this objective. Any prosecution would be a partisan disgrace.
At same time, Obama is trying to talk to and befriend enemies of the United States, such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Obama seems to believe that making friends with enemies of the United States is a good policy and will make the United States safer. But he apparently is forgetting that there is a reason why these people are enemies of the United States. They run repressive regimes that are unsuccessful economically. They do not have redeeming qualities.
In analyzing Obama’s policies from a historical viewpoint, several presidents near the bottom of the presidential rankings polls have treated controversial predecessors with far more humility and grace than Obama has shown.
Warren Harding offers one instructive example. Harding was more of an isolationist than his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson got the United States involved in World War I. Although Harding disagreed with Wilson politically, he did not seek to prosecute members of Wilson’s Administration for going into World War I because Wilson was not seeking to harm the country. In domestic policy, Harding was faced with an economic downturn, but he did not seek to create a panic to promote his own agenda. Instead, he held back government intervention and the economy improved.
If Harding is ranked near the bottom of presidential polls, what does that say about Obama? Harding showed grace, civility and class toward Woodrow Wilson, whom he just as easily could have vilified for his own cheap, petty political gain.
Obama’s first 100 days in office are a disaster. He is even more partisan than anyone could have guessed. Instead of trying to show up President Bush, Obama should figure out a way to help the economy without putting the country in massive debt and figure out a way to conduct foreign policy that does not reward enemies and punish friends of the United States, including our own CIA. This conduct must stop.