WORRISOME THINGS

By Charlie Daniels

The Charlie Daniels Band
October 10, 2014

The world is moving so fast and so many devastating things are happening on a daily basis that even serious issues are constantly back burnered to make way for a more serious or more currant piece of bad news.

ISIS, Ebola, drought, famine, drug cartels, unabated illegal crossings at our Southern border, a house of cards economy, kidnappings, a gridlocked Congress more concerned with inflicting damage on the opposing party than serving the people, unaddressed massive government scandals, potential terrorist attacks on the homeland.

And on it goes, a seemingly never ending procession of crisis du jour, problem overlapping problem without time to address one before having to move prematurely on to the next one leaving behind a ragged trail of half solved puzzles all folding together to construct a planet wide conundrum threatening to explode in an apparently ill informed, ill equipped and very stubborn American president's face.

And all the time, at least speaking for myself, we have to wonder if we're even being told the truth, Obama's seemingly nonchalant changing of horses in the middle of the stream or just out and out lying has fostered the kind of distrust that undermines unity and makes us easy pickings for our enemies.

Nobody wants American troops on the ground in Syria or Iraq but it has become apparent that no victory will be won by air strikes alone, yet the president who promised us that ISIS would be destroyed refuses to even consider it for purely political reasons. He would have to admit that pulling all the forces out of Iraq was a mistake.

The coalition he has put together is not going to commit ground troops. Even though ISIS is currently on Turkey's border, and even though Turkey is a member of Obama's coalition, they have not entered the fray and I believe the reason is that they simply don't trust America's commitment, and who can blame them.

Obama's commitment is more to symbolism than to substance, seemingly feeling that putting together a coalition, no matter how weak, and dropping bombs, no matter how ineffective, is all he should be required to do, much in the same way he seemed to believe that killing Bin Laden ended the terrorist threat, and acting accordingly precipitated the Benghazi debacle and weakened America's defenses.

We have reached the point of critical mass in America and come to the place where one mistake, perhaps allowing travelers from Ebola affected countries to keep flying to America during what could be an undetectable and unwitting incubation period could well cause the infection to inundate our health services, deplete our already slim supply of drugs and cause panic on an unprecedented level.

Or making the wrong decision on the war with ISIS, allowing them to become strong enough and resourceful enough to effect attacks on America and her allies.

We need to be told the unvarnished truth, no matter how harrowing or politically damaging. The survival of no president or party is worth keeping the truth from the public and allowing a national journey down the primrose path to devastation.