Drilling Won't Mask Appeasement

The president is to be commended for opening offshore areas for oil exploration. According to The Times of March 31, the president is ending “a long-standing moratorium on oil exploration along the east coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.”

Obviously, the action is intended to respond to the United States’ need for oil and our dependence on foreign sources. One large foreign source currently is Venezuela, whose leader, Hugo Chavez, is a sworn enemy of the U.S.

According to The Times of April 3, “Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia visited Venezuela on Friday to sign a series of military and oil agreements with President Hugo Chavez, who is seeking to expand ties with Russia as a way of countering the influence of the United States in Latin America.”

The Times also reported that “Mr. Chavez had suggested before Mr. Putin’s arrival that the countries could cooperate ambitiously on nuclear energy and a satellite-launching base in Venezuela.”

What would we do if Venezuela invited Russia to build a missile launch pad, or Russia provided Venezuela with the plans and materials for building nuclear weapons? Would there be a replay of the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s?

Based on our continuing failure to confront North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear activities, I suspect we would do nothing. I fear that we have lost the battle and lost our nerve. It appears that the Obama administration has decided to live with the idea that these two rogue states — North Korea and Iran — can do as they please on the nuclear front.

There is a foul whiff of Munich and appeasement in the air.

A harbinger of what is to come is the Obama administration’s abysmal treatment of our close ally, Israel. Some see Obama's willingness to throw Israel under the bus as an attempt to court better relations with the Sunni Arab countries. Obama apparently believes that better relations with the Sunni Arabs will mean less hostility to the U.S. and greater access to oil.

However, hatred of the U.S. has little to do with what we do and a lot to do with what we are — a free, secular, and democratic country that protects the rights of women and minorities.

No amount of appeasement will change this undeniable fact. Someone also has to explain to me how distancing ourselves from Israel is going to prevent Muslims from killing Muslims by the tens of thousands in Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s statement, “Goyim [Gentiles] kill goyim and they come to hang the Jews,” comes to mind.

One well known supporter of Israel, with great access to the White House, said to me recently, “I have never been so terrified.” Me too.