Way back in 2008, as her husband was looking like he would be the Democratic candidate for president, Michelle Obama actually said "Let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is making a comeback."
I'm thinking of that quote in a very different way this Memorial Day 2015.
Today, as much as I ever have in my life, I have slid my attitude over toward the "embarrassed" side of the scale of pride in being American. Oh, I'm proud, and proud of a lot of things about my country. I'm proud that when there is a disaster in the world, whether a volcano in the Philippines, or an earthquake in Haiti, or a tsunami in Indonesia, it is not ISIS sending aid. It is not Russia or China or Iran sending aid. It is not the people who line up "infidels" and kill them who help out the victims.
It is always America (and, often, our allies).
I'm proud that the armed forces we send over into harm's way, to save innocents from their own dictators, turn control back to the people and leave when they're done, not as conquerors but as heroes. I'm proud that generations of our youth still line up to become soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, or to become servants of their community by being policemen or firemen, all putting themselves in danger or the line of fire for their fellow citizen -- or some other country's citizens.
But I am, at the same time, immensely sobered by the image put forth to the world by the disaster that is the Obama presidency.
We -- meaning "our president" -- do not support our allies, and we turn on them routinely. They cannot depend on us, whether Israel or Egypt, whether Japan or South Korea. We do not listen to them and we coddle their enemies.
We -- meaning "our president" -- have consciously withdrawn from our commitments to countries such as Iraq. That would be the Iraq, where the hard-fought victory won by our troops and our allies in giving the Saddam version of the country back to a freely elected populace was abandoned by Obama and dominance of the country ceded to the Iranian mullahs.
We -- meaning "our president" -- have decided that the Obama Legacy is the shining star on which all foreign policy must be centered. That Legacy (it must always be capitalized) is so important that its prize "achievement", a pending nuclear agreement with Iran, trumps all else in the Middle East, including our sensitive relationship not just with Israel, but with the Sunni former state allies of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and others.
We -- meaning "our president" -- do exactly what we call bad parenting -- we draw so-called "red lines" in places like Syria and then fail to do anything when the red lines are crossed. Our allies notice and no longer trust us, and our enemies notice and, well, feel free to behead more infidels.
We -- meaning "our president" -- abandon our own unemployed by flooding the nation with lower-paid, unskilled illegal immigrants to compete with citizens for the few jobs out there -- for no other reason than their ultimate expectation of voting Democrat.
We -- meaning "American voters" -- elect the guy who did all that, not once but twice, and still there are huge numbers of Democrats who defend him despite his demonstrable incompetence at his job.
How they must be laughing almost everywhere else. Laughing at what was once a proud country intentionally and willfully walking away from its place in the world.
I cry for the USA, for what we truly are is a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world to emulate. We are a bastion of what is good in the world, coming to the aid of those assaulted by nature or by their own dictatorial misfortune; the single largest triumph of the concept of a republic -- of laws, not of men -- in the history of mankind.
That's what we truly are; but we elected Barack Obama apparently unaware of his deep-rooted desire to take us off the pedestal on which our heritage has placed us, and make us but another in a world of countries, no better, no worse than any, and with no special role in it.
Today, all those who fought for the good in the USA and for what we represented prior to this administration, all those who died in its service and whose memory we honor today, are looking down from Heaven in tears. They cry for the dissipation of what we have been, and the innocuousness of what we have become.
I write this day in my own tears, looking up to you who have served and died in our nation's service, crying with you. I look up to those like my Dad, who served 38 years in the Army during three wars and passed away "still serving" at 95, crying a bit with you, Dad. I look up to those like my late father-in-law, who fought as a soldier, who crawled with his rifle through the Italian landings in WWII and never complained.
I look up to them. And I promise them, though my weapon be a pen and not a sword, I will help America return.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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