Mr. President: Time to be America’s leader, and never again the ‘Leader of the Free World’

Mr. President:

Half-measures surely are one of the most vicious forms of self-destruction. As you said this week, Obama’s deal with Iran was rotten and far too costly to the United States. You were right to kill it.

The deal, moreover, was unconstitutional. Obama, as a person who was temporarily the U.S. president, concluded an agreement with Iran and several other parties. He treated it as if it was a binding and constitutionally concluded treaty. It was not. The deal was between Barack Obama and the other parties, and he knew — or should have known — that it would remain valid after he was gone only as long as his successor pretended it was a treaty and binding. Obama’s agreement was an execrable mix of cynicism and probably venality on his part, as well as that of John Kerry. After all, there was plenty of cold, hard cash on those pallets for all involved.

Those two points would have been a full measure, as well as logically and constitutionally sufficient to get the United States out from under the senseless and demeaning burden of always being ready-to-pounce militarily on Iran, a country that Israel and its well-bribed congressional and U.S. media lackeys hate and fear, but one that poses no threat to the United States, unless you are dumb enough to believe that the “Death to America” chants and burning of U.S. flags –common actions on the campuses of U.S. universities — are anything more than old, tiresome, and now meaningless actions, no matter how many Iranians use them in Iran’s parliament or the regime-staged marches in Tehran. Given that both are also trademarks of the Democratic Party, you might have usefully compared the authoritarian and brutal mullahs to Democrat leaders and their paramilitary terrorists in Antifa, BLM, BAM, and other groups, yet to be heard from.

A more melodious melding of the three foregoing paragraphs would have made your announcement briefer, irrefutably valid in terms of the Constitution, commonsense, and genuine U.S. national security interests. Best of all, it would have been a clear sign that the United States was leaving the Iran problem to those who hate and fear it; namely, the region’s Sunni states, Israel, and the charlatans now posing as EU leaders, each of whom wields a decrepit military and is facing escalating domestic social strife. Iran is their problem not — so long as our nuclear forces are potent and capable of quick, precise application — America’s.

With those points made, the clear takeaway from your statement, Mr. President, would have been that a proper definition of an American First foreign policy is one in which there is no room for the United States waging war against scheming Shia Muslim foreigners on behalf of other scheming foreigners in Europe and Israel, Sunni Muslims, the American Jewish community, and the suborned, probably dual-passported Congress, the latter group intending a war that will only cost Iranian lives and U.S. blood and treasure.

But no, being a smart, fair-minded, and tough American-First president, ready to do his best for Americans and their interests, was not enough for you. Indeed, on balance, you may have made matters a bit worse for the United States. You withdrew from the lousy accord, but then you let it appear that you did so on the orders of Netanyahu, who militarily attacked Iranian assets just as soon as you finished speaking. Then you declared that economic sanctions would be re-imposed on Iran in 90 days. As always, sanctions are quiet acts of war that bring conflict closer, and hurt the inhabitants of the country on which they are imposed, but not the Iranian elite nor their long-term strategic ambitions. The sanctions, Mr. President, keep the United States securely locked in the unstoppable downward drift of the war-of-all-against-all in the Near East, the place that you have so often and so correctly identified as a morass that has unnecessarily devoured tens of thousands of the lives and limbs of U.S. military personnel and over seven trillion taxpayer dollars.

And while some pundits and experts have said your decision to scrap the Iraq deal also was meant to send a message to the North Koreans that they better toe the peace line, the two situations are apples and oranges. North Korea was and is isolated, economically broken, and friendless, save for wishy washy China. Kim Jong Un saw that no cavalry was going to come over the hill and that your nuclear button was far more formidable than his. It seems unlikely that his decision needed reinforcement. Iran, on the other hand, is not isolated — even with sanctions — as China, Russia, and, at least implicitly, the EU have already taken the side of Iran against the United States.

Perhaps most worrying, the words you spoke near your statement’s end are an exact repetition of the bipartisan American governing elite’s demented belief that the United States must the “leader of the free world” and an “exceptional” country that is duty bound to bring democracy to all of the world. These words are particular favorites of the Neocons and the Israel-Firsters, as well as your adviser John Bolton, a senior member of both of those anti-American organizations. They use the words as a blind to hide their love of war, their utter loyalty to Israel, and their complete lack of concern about the welfare of Americans and their republic.

Face facts, Mr. President, most Americans have no intention of standing side-by-side with the Iranians or any other people if it means war, dead soldier-children, and massive and wasteful expenditures of their taxes. Face the even more important fact, Mr. President, that you currently hold the presidency of this decaying republic, and you have done much to rehabilitate the luster and dignity of that office and to begin rebuilding some small feeling of affection between the citizenry and their national government.

But, Sir, neither you nor any other president can find in the Constitution any authority to spend American lives and taxes for the interests of other nations or individuals, to spread democracy and secularism abroad, or to intervene in other peoples’ affairs simply because their political circumstances, forms of government, or economic circumstances are not to the U.S. governing elite’s liking.

The roles of being the leader of the free world and that of being the American president are in no way compatible; indeed, the former role makes the president the patsy and bankroller of anti-Americans at home and abroad and thereby negates the aspects of the latter that are the most important to Americans, ensuring low taxes, jobs, rehabilitated infrastructure, a family oriented culture, limited government, border control, and peace. The steady, perhaps irreversible physical and spiritual disintegration of our republic and Union began in 1945 with the creation of the UN and the anointing of America’s Ivy League-educated governing elite as the leaders of the free world.

This deliberately destructive process continues today, Mr. President. It is your preeminent constitutional responsibility to destroy those who are its facilitators, Sir, and there is not a lot of time left to preserve the republic and the Union. With respect, Sir, get your butt in gear, get cracking, and eradicate the elite-induced cancer that is killing the republic.

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.