Duty, Honor … Country Optional

James Carafano / May 24, 2010

Thomas Jefferson established an academy at West Point because he wanted an institution to train Army officers which would be beholden to no political party. Cadets learn their responsibility is to live the academy motto—“duty, honor, country.” That said, it is unfortunate that President Barack Obama chose to make the centerpiece of his remarks at West Point last week a partisan diatribe—with another dose of “anything but Bush” rhetoric. Even more disappointing, the President outlined the main elements of the Obama Doctrine: greater reliance on international institutions; substituting soft power for hard power; and a more subdued and less self-reliant America – a scheme designed more to manage American decline than to ensure its people remain safe, free and prosperous.

President Obama’s dream for a new international order has informed virtually all of his administration’s foreign policy initiatives. And almost all of them demonstrate just why sacrificing American sovereignty and security at the altar of global bureaucracy is such a terrible idea. Both Russia and China continue to manipulate US efforts to impose sanctions on Iran in the UN Security Council to their own ends. For instance, it was just reported last weekend that the Obama administration further undermined its already terribly weak Iranian sanctions resolution by allowing Moscow to sell advanced air and cruise missile defenses to Iran. (more…)