Obama Is Bringing America to Its Knees - Is Impeachment the Answer?

It is one thing for China to complain about American National Security Agency eavesdropping techniques. The world expects China to criticize the United States. But when Europe complains, it is a cry from America's oldest and most loyal diplomatic, military and trading partner - a relationship that predates by a century America's modern ties with Israel and Japan. And because of NSA massive monitoring of European data transmission and phone calls of European leaders, the US will need to respond with urgency and humility if it wants to keep its access to an important tool used to track terrorist money flows. On Monday, German officials cited last week's non-binding resolution by the European Parliament to suspend a post-9/11 agreement allowing the Americans access to bank transfer data to track the flow of terrorist money. German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said she believes the Americans are using the information to gather economic intelligence apart from terrorism and that the deal, popularly known as the SWIFT agreement, should be suspended. That would represent a sharp rebuke to the United States from some of its closest partners. The German Minister said it is not enough for Europe to express indignation, but to suspend the SWIFT program would require approval by a substantial majority of the 28 European Union countries. The agreement allows access to the flow of funds transferred through the private, Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which handles the movement of money between banks worldwide. Merkel said Friday that she was open to the idea of suspending the SWIFT agreement, saying she "needed to look at this again more closely" and weigh "what we will lose for the security of our citizens and what we don't." And today, while Europe was weighing a response to allegations that the Americans spied on their closest European allies, including tapping the cellphone of Chancellor Merkel, a Spanish newspaper reported that the NSA monitored more than 60 million phone calls in that country during the period from December 2012 to January 2013. The EU noted, however, that negotiations for the new US-EU trade agreement will go forward because the deal will aid both Europe and America, providing a united trading block against competition from China and other emerging markets. But Europe will insist that the trade agreement include stronger rules for protecting data as a result of the NSA allegations. Data protection and personal privacy laws in Europe are generally stronger than in the United States. But Europe wants to be careful not to damage relations with its major ally. Even Spain, despite the new revelations, does not want to endanger the US military presence in Spain at two bases. The US is boosting its presence there as part of a missile defense system, and Spanish and American officials have stressed that this will give Spain an economic boost as it struggles with unemployment of 26% following years of recession. ~~~~~ Until this past weekend, the NSA issue had not hurt President Barack Obama politically in America because Republicans have blamed Edward Snowden rather than the White House. But, US Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this weekend : "First of all, the reports I hear is that President Obama did not know about much of these activities of the NSA, to me is alarming....The level of detachment of this president from just the day-to-day management of things that he should fully be aware of is actually frightening." Johnson added, "One of the first priorities of government is our national defense - keeping Americans safe. The best way for us to do that is to have a robust intelligence-gathering process, and obviously, the disclosures by Edward Snowden are really doing great damage to our ability to do that....But there needs to be limits in terms of what America really does. I would say that tapping the personal phones of world leaders is not a good idea, but the president should be aware of what is or isn't happening under his watch, and that to me is almost more alarming....Because we're the world superpower, we really do provide an awful lot of security for other countries around the world and we need intelligence-gathering capability....There are certain things we need to be considering within our intelligence community, with oversight from Congress...I'm not saying all the details of these debates should be held in public, though, because it needs to be, in many respects, very covert if it's going to be effective." Asked for his assessment of how the Obama administration is handling anti-terror efforts, Johnson answered : "President Obama's foreign policy is a long way from being effective, let's put it that way. I'm trying to be kind....What Americans should really understand is President Obama as a senator utterly opposed just about everything that President Bush did from the standpoint of programs to maintain our national security. But now that he's president of the United States, now that he has actually seen the presidential daily briefings, now that he's actually being made aware of the very real and very significant threats against America, he's pretty well embraced everything that President Bush did. That really ought to tell Americans something....I just wish we had a president that was more engaged, not so detached, and actually had some kind of a strategy for meeting the world as opposed to just withdrawing from the world." Johnson also asserted that we need to "very concerned" about the possible repercussions stemming from disclosures about US spying on foreign leaders. "I'm the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe, and we hear it all the time....Part of the real problem is this president does not have good relations with members of Congress, he does not have good solid relations with different world leaders. We have a total lack of effective leadership coming out of the White House and that should concern every American....The world's a very dangerous place. America faces many challenges. We need an effective leader in the White House and we are not getting that type of leadership out of President Obama." ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is difficult to add anything to Senator Johnson's damning critique of Barack Obama's dismal presidential performance. America is being brought to its knees by a President who is totally incompetent. What Obama should do is resign, but his self-love apparently far outweighs his love for America. It is now in the hands of Congress, specifically the House, to investigate and find reasons to raise articles of impeachment against President Obama and then use that as leverage with Democrat Party leaders to force Barack Obama out of the presidency while there is still something of the real America left to salvage.