9/11, Ground Zero Mosque, Gitmo Bewilder Obama

Ronald Kessler

President Obama has many talents, but being president isn’t one of them.

He waded into the controversy over building a mosque two blocks from ground zero by appearing to take both sides. At first he seemed to side with proponents of the mosque. Then he clarified his remarks to suggest he may side with opponents.

In doing so, Obama managed to infuriate both sides. During Obama’s second day on the job, he ordered that the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp be closed within a year. He had no idea then and has no idea now where the prisoners will go. Almost two years later, the prison camp remains open.

Obama let Atty. Gen. Eric Holder announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in federal court in New York. The administration made the decision without consulting the FBI or the New York City Police Department on the obvious security implications. Today, the plan is in limbo.

Obama said he opposed Arizona’s immigration law but then admitted he had not read it.

While acknowledging he did not know “all the facts,” Obama said Cambridge police acted “stupidly” when a white police officer arrested a black Harvard professor who was being obstreperous during the investigation of a report of a possible break-in.

Political pundits call such gaffes being “off message,” as if the president were a brand of soap. But the president is a man, and this man lacks basic competence.

One of the first signs that Obama was in over his head came during the campaign. NBC’s Brian Williams asked Obama in an April 2007 debate how he would change the U.S. military stance overseas if terrorists hit two American cities simultaneously.

“Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans,” Obama said.

After the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001, no emergency response plan would have saved the men and women who jumped to their deaths from windows of the twin towers. If President Bush had given such a nonsensical answer, the media would have pounced on him. But when Obama made the remark, the media ignored it.

By overwhelming margins, Americans oppose Obama’s major initiatives. Even his attempts to reach out to the Muslim world have failed. Instead of improving America’s image in the minds of Muslims, Obama has actually made things worse. Since Obama became president, the popularity of the United States in Muslim countries has declined, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey.

During the campaign, I wrote in the Newsmax article Obama’s Inexperience Tough to Ignore, “The idea that America might entrust its security and future to someone who has never demonstrated an ability to get anything of significance done is scary.”

Obama is a splendid writer and a magnificent orator. But he truly thinks that his job consists of uttering words that will magically change the course of events. Besides being arrogant, that indeed is scary.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com