As we slept off our hangovers in preparation for game day, people in Nairobi, Kenya, faced unspeakable horror at a shopping mall. Marked by the rapid staccato of automatic gunfire, militants of the Islamic terror organization al-Shabab stormed the Westgate mall seeking slaughter and mayhem.
With reports of as many as 69 dead, and dozens more injured, this was the worst terrorist attack in east Africa in more than a decade.
Along with the litany of other jihadist attacks, it has become painfully clear that the fight with Islamic terror organizations is not yet done, despite President Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric leading up to the 2012 presidential elections. The president claimed the struggle was almost over, and that al-Qaeda was on the run.
We, the American people, were fed an outright lie to suit the president’s campaign message that he single-handedly won the War on Terror.
With U.S. security forces all but removed from Iraq and withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan set to be near completion next year, our major involvement in the fight against organized Islamic jihadists is winding down.
As a result, Iraq’s “democratic” government is rife with corruption and nearing collapse while Afghanistan will likely fall to al-Qaeda- and Taliban-backed warlords once we are out of the country.
Mission accomplished, indeed.
What’s more? The former relatively stable nations Libya and Egypt are now in states of flux.
Egypt, our poster child for Middle Eastern democracies, is now in the hands of a military government that had no choice but to oust the political wing of the jihadist movement from government.
In Libya, after the U.S. gave aid to allegedly pro-Western rebels in their fight against Muammar Gaddafi, the American consulate in Benghazi was attacked en masse by well-armed, well-trained militants and we lost four brave Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
At home, during the annual Boston Marathon, two homemade bombs were detonated in the crowd, killing three and wounding roughly 264 others.
The perpetrators? They were recently radicalized Chechen jihadists who wanted to bring their holy war to America. Even with the sweeping powers of the National Security Agency and its PRISM program, the administration was not able to stop these two men from attacking us in our own backyard.
If this is what success looks like, failure must be horrifying.
The president’s strategy of droning suspected militants to death in Pakistan and Yemen has failed; it has only acted as a recruitment tool for extremist groups.
His plan to bring democracy to Libya and Egypt has failed.
With the withdrawals nearing completion, our pains and labors in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon have been for nothing.
What President Obama fails to understand is that his efforts have done nothing to halt the spread of radical Islam.
We should consider ourselves blessed that Secretary of State John Kerry shot his mouth off, allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker a chemical weapons deal in Syria, otherwise, we would see U.S. forces going to directly aid al-Qaeda and the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant.
The reason for all of it? Most likely it’s a deadly mix of sheer incompetence in foreign policy and an overwhelming desire to earn political favor, all on the part of the president.
During the 2012 campaign, Vice President Joe Biden proudly proclaimed, “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive!”
While that was, in fact, true, I would direct the vice president to take note: Detroit has filed for bankruptcy and 69 people were just murdered while out shopping. The radical Islamists are not on the run, they are expanding their spheres of influence.
This is what happens when a community organizer tries to play commander-in-chief.
Ryan McGehee is a 20-year-old political science, history and international studies junior from Zachary.