THE POST AMERICAN PRESIDENT: AN INTERVIEW WITH PAMELA GELLER

Posted By on July 30th, 2010

The Post-American Presidency

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/07/30/the-post-american-presidency/

Posted By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog AtlasShrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Frontpage Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications. She is the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America [1] (forward by Ambassador John Bolton) — just released on July 27.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Tell us about your new book and what you have discovered about Obama’s war on America.

Geller: Thanks Jamie.

The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America is the product of three years of research I’ve done on Barack Obama: his socialist internationalism, his ties to America-haters and anti-Semites, his race-baiting, and more. As president, Obama is presiding over America’s decline, and is in many important ways the apostle of that decline. He is betraying Israel; warring against free speech; refusing to take real steps to stop Iran’s nuclear program, despite the many genocidal statements Ahmadinejad has made against Israel, and the open contempt the mullahs have shown for his efforts to reach out to them.

Obama is turning allies into enemies and enemies into allies; submitting the U.S. to international law; bankrupting us with socialist schemes both domestically and internationally; bypassing the democratic process and the system of checks and balances by governing through a proliferation of “czars”; and using global warming as a pretext to redistribute wealth from the First World to the Third World.

He has appointed numerous proponents of the primacy of international law over U.S. law, including Harold Koh, legal adviser for the State Department; Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and now Elena Kagan; John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) – that is, the science czar; Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change – that is, the global-warming czar; and Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or Regulatory Czar.

Obama has never demonstrated any respect for the freedom of speech, the fundamental protection the Bill of Rights gives us against tyranny. He has appointed a proliferation of officials who have in various ways advocated restrictions on the freedom of speech: Kagan, Sunstein, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Obama comes from a Muslim background, as detailed in the book, and has numerous friends and associates who are inveterate foes of Israel. Not just Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, but also Samantha Power, the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights; Robert Malley and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two key foreign policy advisers; Rosa Brooks, advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy; and Chuck Hagel, co-chair of the Intelligence Advisory Board.

The book details all this and much more, including Obama’s betrayal of the freedom movement in Iran and of the democratic forces in Honduras, and his attempts to use climate change to destroy American sovereignty. Everything flows from his core beliefs, which were shaped by some of his earliest experiences and confirmed by his later associations.

The book also makes some shocking new revelations, including details of how Obama took campaign money from Gaza, in violation of federal law; how ACORN, with which Barack Obama has been deeply involved for years, destroyed Republican voter registrations; the full truth about how making America safe for Sharia is not incidental, but is a cornerstone of Obama’s presidential program; and about how Obama is consistently, not just occasionally, anti-democratic and favors authoritarian regimes and measures.

FP: How come Obama’s Muslim background [2] is never discussed in our media? And Obama camouflages it as well, even though it is a fact. Explain to us why this matters.

Geller: Jamie, the media doesn’t discuss it simply because it would reflect poorly on Obama. Yet it matters because Islam has since its inception had a political and expansionist character, and that that would mean that ties to Islam had a greater significance than simple allegiance to this or that religious group.

And Obama himself, with his Muslim father and stepfather and Muslim upbringing in Indonesia, knows the stakes involved. It is impossible in our post-9/11 world to be a leader and not know what Islam means, or at the very least know the hell being wreaked upon the free and not-so-free world by the warriors of Islamic jihad. And Obama has already told us which side he will be on when the lines are fully drawn: “In the wake of 9/11,” he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” [1]

In the first year of his presidency, he showed in numerous ways that he would indeed stand with them.

FP: Tell us a bit about how anti-Semitism plays into all of this. We know Islam’s disposition to Jews and so, perhaps, Obama’s bullying of Israel [3] is no coincidence at all?

Geller: Indeed Jamie, Islamic anti-Semitism is part of the Koranic imperative and the pervasive influence of Islamic Jew-hatred cannot be ignored when assessing the impact of Barack Obama’s early life experiences upon the later trajectory of his career. If a devout Muslim prays the obligatory five daily prayers, he will repeat the Shehadah, the first chapter of the Koran, seventeen times; that chapter concludes with prayers that Muslims generally understand as asking Allah not to make the believer like the Jews (“those who have earned Allah’s anger”) or the Christians (“those who have gone astray”). The prayers generally conclude with the dua qunoot, a prayer that Allah’s wrath would overtake infidels.

Imagine the influence that all this – inculcating contempt for Jews and Christians seventeen times a day – might have on a young mind and a future president. Troubling psychological wiring might have been set in place for a lifetime.

Yet Obama has never spoken about the influence his early experiences with Islam had upon his mind and heart – in sharp contrast to others who were raised in Islam and left the faith. Obama would have had to make a decision to reject Islam.

If so, when did he make that decision? How?

Muslims who have left Islam are generally vocal about why they left: Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, and others have spoken out fearlessly on these issues. Obama may not wish to engage in critiques of Islam, but if he left Islam, he must have very definite thoughts about it. And even if this is simply not an important issue to him, then he can still appreciate how important it is – knowing what he knows about Islam and apostasy.

Apostasy is punishable by death in Islam. Yet there have been no calls for Obama’s death from the Islamic world. Why is this? Islam gives no free passes.

Obama’s posture on this is hard to define or understand – all the more so because this is a critical issue.

Transformational issues facing this nation and the world at large – the world at war, creeping Sharia, the perversion of the rights of free men – hang in the balance during the Obama administration as never before. The stakes could not be higher. On foreign policy, Europe has lain down. The political elites have capitulated to Islamists and to multiculturalists. Europe is committing slow cultural and demographic suicide. It seems unclear that they could hold up their end even if America did the heavy lifting. As far as Israel is concerned, Obama has already made it clear that while he is in the White House, Israel is on its own.

As Obama continues to pursue his pro-Islamic and anti-Israel policies, this will only get worse. And so his deception about his Islamic ties must be explored. The potential damage to this country is incalculable.

These are dangerous times. Those consequences are, in this post-American presidency, already becoming apparent.

FP: How does Obama see the world and America? What is his vision and ultimate goal? Was there ever such a radical person to have occupied the White House?

Geller: Obama sees America as just another country. His vision is to make America part of a socialist internationalist supranational construct, destroying American sovereignty. Obama makes Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton look like conservatives.

He said it himself during a visit to London for a summit of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G-20. A reporter asked Obama: “[C]ould I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of ‘American exceptionalism’ that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy?”

It was a question Ronald Reagan once answered without ever having been asked it. He said: “With all its flaws, America remains a unique achievement for human dignity on a scale unequaled anywhere in the world.”

But Obama offered no similar avowal of American uniqueness. Instead, he equated American exceptionalism with the national pride that a citizen of any nation could feel: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

Then, perhaps realizing how much he had just trivialized the achievements of the greatest republic and most magnanimous nation the world had ever known, Obama avowed: “I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.” He even allowed for the possibility that there were some reasons that Americans should not be embarrassed by their nation’s history:

“If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.”

Embarrassed? Who would even think such a thing? Except someone who is embarrassed by America. It’s as if the most beautiful girl in the world walks into the best party, bedecked in the most magnificent dress and finest jewels, and someone whispers to her, “Don’t be embarrassed.”

Obama even acknowledged that “we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.” But in saying that he may have sensed that he was venturing into areas where he didn’t want to go, so he backtracked:

“Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we’re not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.”

It was a defining moment. Barack Obama could find some praiseworthy aspects of America – but in saying that he was careful to say also that every country could say the same, apparently in equal measure, and while the U.S. Constitution and system of government – “though imperfect” – had some “exceptional” features, well, other countries also had “wonderful qualities.”

FP: What does this crystallize about Obama?

Geller: It basically can really only mean one thing: that for him, America is nothing special. Even when Obama does refer to America’s essential goodness, as he did in his 2010 State of the Union address, it is only to advance his commitment to socialist internationalism and redistribution of American wealth: he wields Americans’ empathy and compassion like a club to manipulate us into funding bad foreign policy and despotic regimes.

Obama went to work from his first day in office to make America’s decline become a reality. As the most powerful man in the world, he would level the playing field, even if it meant cutting America off at the knees. Good and evil would be made equivalent, with evil sanctioned by the world’s only remaining superpower: democracy and tyranny, dictator and elected leader would be given the same moral sanction. He traveled around the world and denigrated American achievements and American uniqueness. He reached out in friendship to our enemies and the enemies of freedom and individual rights, including Hugo Chávez and even Fidel Castro, and offered Russia a significant boost on its way to returning to superpower status tried by selling out Eastern Europe. He catered to – and fawned shamelessly over – Islam and Muslim countries, making preposterous statements about how much the United States owes Islam, and even about how America was a Muslim country. [2]

Obama clearly believed that doing all this would bolster his image in other countries. But he was taking a calculated risk: that his apparent lack of concern for American national security, and for America’s historical achievements and place in the world, would backfire and anger Americans. Nonetheless, he took the risk. He must have believed that he was powerful enough and popular enough to neutralize any domestic political backlash that may result – and he certainly had the mainstream media on his side, as he did during his presidential campaign, to cover for him, make excuses for him when he failed, and obscure the full scope of what he was doing.

Barack Hussein Obama has chosen the path of the post-American presidency. He seems to envision himself as more than just the president of the United States, but as a shaper of the new world order, an internationalist energetically laying the groundwork for global government: the president of the world.

FP: What is the worst damage Obama can perpetrate?

Geller: He could severely damage American sovereignty by making us subject to treaties that bind us to obey international law. He has been trying to do this over the climate change issue, among others. He is also well on his way to destroying the American economy by nationalizing huge sectors of American industry: the banks, the automobile industry, and now the healthcare industry.

FP: How do we take our country back? Can we reverse the damage that Obama has done? Is there a chance that Americans might actually re-elect Obama?

Geller: A great deal hinges on November 2010. But with the Republicans generally clueless or afraid to challenge Obama as he should be challenged, or unaware of the implications of what he is doing, and the media in his pocket, he could easily be reelected.

FP: What are some thoughts you have, or things you know, after writing the book that are different before you started writing it? Has anything surprised you?

Geller: I have been investigating Obama in depth since 2007. Nothing he has done as President has surprised me. I saw it all coming and sounded the warning at my website AtlasShrugs.com. I was derided and vilified for doing so, but what I wrote then has been proven right.

FP: How does Obama view his role as President of the United States?

Geller: He sees his job as one of subjecting America to international laws. The problem for Americans is that in his quest for internationalism and global socialism, Obama is leaving the United States twisting in the wind. He is treating America as a stepping stone to help get him where he wanted to go, and he seems willing to do anything to destroy America’s prestige in the world. The consequences could be disastrous, and the presidency and the nation damaged irreparably.

FP: Final thoughts?

Geller: After just one year of the post-American presidency, on January 29, 2010, Solidarity hero and former Polish President Lech Walesa spoke of the new post-American world:

“The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it — militarily. They also lead economically, but they’re getting weak. They don’t lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope.” [3]

Our enemies could never have defeated us; we can only defeat ourselves.

Whether Barack Hussein Obama succeeds in destroying America or not, those words could be the epitaph of his post-American presidency.

FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

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