A short month ago, in February, as al-Qaida-allied Islamist militants rampaged through the streets of the capital of Yemen, the Obama administration ordered the Marine guards at our embassy to destroy their weapons and flee the country on civilian aircraft. The Marines were even ordered to destroy their personal side arms at the airport, as the embassy and a dozen embassy vehicles were abandoned to the militants.
This humiliating retreat and this violation of the Marines’ military code of conduct was ordered by the Obama White House as a part of the rapid evacuation of all U.S. employees from the embassy and the city itself.
Think about it. The Obama White House and Obama’s Pentagon and State Department appointees ordered the United States Marines to “stand down.” Our Marines were ordered to flee and to abandon their weapons, even though the U.S. Navy had forces available a short distance away in the Red Sea that could have come to the aid of the Marine detachment at the embassy.
In the wake of this February fiasco, we are left to ask this question: Which is more deplorable and more significant for the fate of our nation, that we abandoned an ally in the war on Islamist terrorism, or that we required our U.S. Marines to abandon their post and their weapons in the face of an armed threat? Which act has the most dangerous consequences?
Asking those questions leads millions of Americans to ask another question: Is there no limit to the humiliations and treasonous actions this president can inflict on our nation before Congress will fulfill its constitutional duty to remove him from office?
Instead of ordering the U.S. Marines to stand down, it is time to order Barack Obama to step down. “You have done enough damage. Take your Muslim Brotherhood advisers with you and retire to your new multi-million-dollar mansion in Hawaii.”
That Barack Obama hates the military is an open secret, and it is a national embarrassment that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are required to salute him as their commander-in-chief. They follow orders as a matter of duty and high tradition, but Congress can remedy that embarrassment and that humiliation with articles of impeachment. But just as our military is embarrassed by Obama, civilians are equally embarrassed by our cowardly politicians.
We hear the excuses for inaction on impeachment – mainly, that regardless of the facts and the arguments, the U.S. Senate would not convict him. That is a weak and meaningless argument for many reasons.
First, in politics there can be no such certainty about the outcome of a serious impeachment inquiry. In 1973, the early advocates for Nixon’s impeachment were told the effort was a waste of time – until the White House tapes revealed evidence of the cover-up. The tapes were a secret until revealed in the course of a congressional committee investigation. No one can foretell the end result of a serious, public investigation of Obama’s unconstitutional actions if that investigation is armed with the power of subpoena and is followed by the spotlight of daily media coverage.
The second reason is that the U.S. House of Representatives – the “people’s house” – has a constitutional duty to act regardless of the odds for success. The politics of the matter may change dramatically once elected officials resolve to just do the right thing and defend the Constitution.
Obama’s hatred of the military is matched only by his contempt for the U.S. Constitution, and both his hatred and his contempt are more and more evident to the American people. Each week brings a new Obama action outside his legitimate powers and duties.
The latest Obama foray into imperial arrogance is his plan to sign a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran and take it to the United Nations instead of the U.S. Senate. This follows by two weeks the instruction to his Justice Department appointees to prepare a plan to circumvent a federal judge’s Temporary Restraining Order against implementation of his executive amnesty. He plans to ignore the court order and proceed with his amnesty in the 24 states that are not a formal part of the 26-state lawsuit against the unconstitutional amnesty.
Americans are realizing that Obama’s arrogance and his hatred of the military, like his ambitions for “transformative actions,” know no bounds. What we do not yet know is what price our politicians will pay in 2016 for ignoring their constitutional duty to impeach and remove this increasingly dangerous impostor.
Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC. He represented Colorado’s sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, and he is a former presidential candidate.
He is the author of In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security, and he can be heard every Monday on Grassroots Radio Colorado with Kris Cook (KLZ 560 AM).
