By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — In a prior article, I wrote with dismay about the U.S.Secretary of Defense “leaking” to the world that “Israel would attack Iran” in this (now past) Spring, and about others in the Obama administration leaking that “Azerbaidjan had agreed to allow Israel to use its territory for the assault.” I then chalked it up to negligence, incompetence, ineptitude. But since then, we witnessed an avalanche of “leaks,” this time with a clear political motive– in my opinion unwise,even counterproductive– to re-elect the president.
First, it was the silly one, purported to make Obama look tough and in charge, announcing that he controls the “kill list” of terrorists, and approves each and everyone of the assassinations, by drone or other means. Then, came the news that a certain Dr Afridi, a Pakistani who has collaborated with the Navy Seals and given them precious information about Osama Bin Laden, was uncovered by irresponsible talk, arrested by the Pakistani government, condemned to 33 years of prison for treason, and then abandoned by the Obama government …which continues to pay billions to Pakistan.
And later we learned that a film is being made on the assassination of Bin Laden , again to enhance the image of the president . The problem is that , for the film to have the desired impact, it will have to divulge methods and sources, and heretofore classified information, The selected filmmaker has been connected to the Navy Seals commanders for that purpose. In my opinion, it is too early and too risky to make a film of that ultra-secret operation.
But the most dangerous of all leaks is the mind-boggling decision to announce to the world that the U.S. and Israel have been doing some cyber sabotage of the nuclear facilities in Iran for some time, and have caused some substantial damage. You remember, some time ago, the Stuxnet operation was shrouded in secrecy, and had left Iran guessing after they discovered the damage. Now the cat is out of the bag, courtesy of America. Nobody has been arrested, nobody punished for this breach of security. The Iranians are not dumb. They have good engineers, many of them graduates from America, France, and Britain. Whatever they lack in knowledge, they buy with oil money. They said they had found the problem and they know how to deal with it.
In Israel, the politicians are furious since most of the work was done there. One scientist told me it would take many months to “reset” the system which may have obviated the necessity of a bloody confrontation. What a monumental blunder !
Another leak of sorts was a stunning “revelation” by President Obama : Leaving the teleprompter for a moment, he said :” If you got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen…” He then elaborated on the theme with more stupefying argumentation , attributing the “success of individual enterprises ” to the government “which built roads and bridges.” He did not think even one moment that , in order to build the roads and the bridges, the vaunted government took the money from the taxpayers who are those same entrepreneurs who created successful enterprises which he now denigrated. Nor did he realize that he had insulted all successful businesspeople, innovators and inventors, who, through hard work, sweat and sacrifices, have enriched themselves, and the Commonwealth, and have filled the coffers of the insatiable, inefficient, and wasteful government.
Obama’s harangues reminded me of old times, post WW II ,when European intellectuals, and very few in the US, embraced with fervor and fever the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism and regurgitated them to their young students. My French Communist professors extolled the virtues of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (published in 1848) and its companion, The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Their Dialectic Materialism taught that commerce is thievery, profit is illicit, business owners exploit their workers, and that the revolution will give birth to a classless society and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In spite of Stalin’s atrocities, they were still ecstatic about “the Soviet Union paradise.” We now know what happened to that “paradise.”
The president’s campaign machine went into spinning mode: he didn’t mean that, out-of-context etc. Some say ” It was a gaffe, off teleprompter…” But, as judiciously defined by Michael Kinsley, “a gaffe is when a politician inadvertently tells the truth.” That’s what I believe happened. What Obama said is germane to his worldview, his core beliefs, shaped and forged by his upbringing and by the influential mentors in his life, as happens with every individual. In his own writings and in what others wrote about him, the imposing personality of Frank Marshall Davis , a card-carrying member of the Communist party, appears to have had the strongest influence on Barack Obama’s formative years–late teens– in Hawai. Unsurprisingly, one of his friends, John Drew, who knew Obama at Occidental College, said : ” Obama was already an ardent Marxist when I met him in the Fall of 1980.”
Whether he still is, in his heart, a Marxist, we can’t know ; we should judge him , as a candidate, by what he says and, more importantly, by what he does now, and what he has done in his first term. Now we see clearly what he meant by his pre-electoral promise , in 2008, “to fundamentally transform America.” From individual entrepreneurship, free trade, small government, to a huge governmental machine that provides for the needs of the people “from the cradle to the grave.” From “the land of opportunity” to” the land of job security and guaranteed benefits.” From the paychecks of dignified employment to the foodstamps of humiliating dependency. This explains the stimuli and bailouts; the unilateral change in immigration law giving practically amnesty to millions with the stroke of a pen and circumventing the Congress; the excessive spending funded by taxing, borrowing, and printing money; the Obamacare which, by offering employers a choice of enrolling their workers or paying a fine, will inevitably result in the universal single payer system which Hillary Clinton, as first lady, failed to achieve in1993.
The dour consequences of this “transformation” are already visible: the high unemployment (8.2% to 17%); the 5.3 trillion dollars added to the national debt in the last three and a half years (more than all his predecessors combined,) , up to 16.3 trillion, and growing; the current annual deficit (40% of the budget are borrowed money;) the increase in the rate of poverty and population on the dole; the increase in the number of “takers” with the decrease in the number of “makers;” etc. Financial experts say that many trillions of dollars are hoarded , uninvested, because of fear and uncertainty, much of that abroad. If Obama is re-elected, they fear a huge flight of capital overseas that will cause massive unemployment, social unrest, and economic disaster, which will make today’s problem look very benign. A decade ago, Dr Adrian Rogers wrote the following which I quote in extenso because of its contemporary validity and proven veracity:
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
*
Yetiv is a lecturer and freelance writer based in La Jolla. He may be contacted at isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com