(Photo by Pete Souza)
It’s kind of Obama to share with us the benefit of his resounding success in solving America’s own problems. Proceeding from that solid base, this living argument against reverse discrimination has decided to offer Britain some avuncular advice.
It’s futile to project one’s own feelings on the country at large, but advice is always welcome – provided that whoever proffers it has at least a remote idea of what he’s talking about. Alas, in Obama’s case this precondition isn’t met, which makes his advice not only useless but also annoying.
He seems to think that, by staying in the EU, Britain will be better equipped to solve the migration crisis and counter Russian aggression. One wonders from what evidence this advice proceeds.
Speaking of the former problem, migration is an eternal phenomenon. But the crisis is distinctly recent – it never existed until the EU got going in earnest. Nor is this a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The crisis is directly traceable to the EU’s asinine policies.
At least I hope they are merely asinine and not downright evil. After all, it’s likely that a wicked contrivance depending for its existence on the destruction of Europe’s sovereign nations would introduce policies leading to that end.
The most obvious policy is to erase all the national borders and promote ‘free movement of labour’ (or, more likely, welfare recipients), effectively trying to boil all nations in the same cauldron, destroying the flavour of every ingredient. As a side benefit, this evil design could also involve attracting vast numbers of cultural aliens from outside Europe who would make the stew even more homogeneously tasteless.
However, I’m prepared to give the EU the benefit of the doubt and accept that Schengen springs not from evil but merely from stupidity. In either case, it’s not immediately clear how staying in the EU would help solve the problem that the EU itself has created and is perpetuating.
As to countering Russian aggression, exactly what in the EU’s history has led one of the worst presidents in US history to the conclusion that staying in the EU would serve that purpose? Surely not the way it handled Yugoslavian wars? In fact, whenever the EU meddled in military conflicts, it unfailingly made the situation far worse.
In most cases, it didn’t even meddle, choosing instead to ignore, for example, Russia’s acts of blatant aggression and unfettered brutality.
Where was the EU in 2000, when the Russians bombed Chechnya flat, while indulging in the kind of atrocities that would have made Serbian chieftains envious?
Where was it in 2008, when the Russians launched an unprovoked attack on Georgia, shelling villages of no military significance, torturing and murdering as they went?
Where was it in 2014, when the Russians violated every international law by annexing one part of a sovereign European state de jure and a larger part de facto?
Oh sorry, at that time the EU reacted by imposing sanctions on a handful of Russian officials and other gangsters. That decisive measure did nothing other than encouraging Putin to try to turn Syria into a Russian mandate by striking a deal with Assad and bombing out of existence every force opposing him.
The knock-on effect of the EU’s appeasement of Putin’s aggressive kleptofascist regime can be seen outside the UN building in New York, where crowds gather holding up photographs of thousands of Syrian children killed by indiscriminate Russian bombing.
One can almost understand, if not necessarily forgive, Obama. Americans in general have only a vague idea of what goes on outside the 50 states, and only the very educated and astute among them defy this richly deserved stereotype. Obama, a man of understated intellectual attainment, clearly doesn’t fall into that category.
He also vindicates another stereotype, that of Americans feeling they’ve solved every little problem of man, and insisting therefore on offering ignorant and sanctimonious guidance to nations of less fortunate experience. That’s all par for the course.
One becomes really upset, however, when a British Prime Minister spouts the same drivel, as Dave Cameron constantly does. Here he is, hanging himself on the rope of his own gibberish:
“In a world where Russia is invading Ukraine and a rogue nation like North Korea is testing nuclear weapons, we need to stand up to the aggression together…” by smoothing the path to Dave’s eventual elevation to EU presidency.
Right. Not only will Putin be stopped in his tracks if we dissolve our historic sovereignty in a wicked, grossly corrupt and incompetent contrivance, but North Korea too will see the error of her ways and abandon her nuclear weapons.
Either this lot are cosmically stupid or they think we are or, most likely, both. What’s particularly refreshing is their cynicism in peddling self-evident falsehoods with the agility of snake oil salesmen.
At least Obama will be booted out soon enough. Cameron will continue to poison our political life for another six years or so. Alas, in neither case is there any guarantee that the successor will be any better. In fact, there’s a near guarantee of the opposite.