WHY ARE THE NATIONS LAUGHING AT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

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Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. (The Guardian via Getty )

JUNE 25, 2013


BARACK OBAMA'S ENDURING INEPTITUDE


BY WES PRUDEN


Barack Obama’s critics are loud enough and persistent enough, but maybe we’ve been baying at the wrong moon.


It’s not the president’s ideology, his arrogance, his attention-deficit disorder, his endless deference to alien religious faith and his contempt for the faith of those close to home (or even his backswing) that’s what’s wrong with the man in charge of the government. It’s the sheer incompetence of the leader and his gang.

This is the gang that can’t shoot straight, eager to stifle or soften the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments and ever ready to stumble abroad with timidity in the face of governments that mean us ill. In the circumstances, maybe incompetence is not necessarily a bad thing. They could be doing a lot more harm if they actually knew how to do what they’re trying to do. The Obama legion can’t figure out which is the business end of the gun.


The spectacle of a 29-year-old computer geek armed with a laptop and a credit card racing across the hemispheres, eluding the FBI, the CIA, the TSA, the IRS and the rest of the alphabet soup available to the president, taunting the entire U.S. Government to catch him if it can, has much of the rest of the world applauding, cheering and laughing. This is the entertainment nobody has seen since Bonnie and Clyde redefined the job of bank examiner on the front pages of 80 years ago. This is also something new in our history, the world laughing at the ineptitude of the United States. Only Mr. Obama, who set out years ago to cut America down to a size to suit the third world, can be pleased.


Nobody roots for the fuzz, and a petition to the White House to grant a full pardon to Edward Snowden had collected 111,000 signatures by mid-day Monday, seeking “a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret [National Security Administration] surveillance programs,” and calling him “a national hero.”


The petition, to the White House “We, the People” website, has earned an official White House response, even if all the petitioners can expect is the usual argle-bargle, full of mush and slurry, signifying nothing.