My Disappointment with President Obama

In a little over 4 months we will be electing our President.  Time to reflect on what President Obama has and has not done during his current term.

What he has done:

Got us out of Iraq.

Got Osama Ben-Laden

Signed a possibly unconstitutional Health care reform act (ACA)

Signed a first step law to reign in the banking industry

Bailed out GM and Chrysler

What he has not done:

Gotten us out of Afghanistan

Take decisive action to lower unemployment

Reign in runaway spending by the Department of Defense

Close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility

On the things he has not done, here are some observation with the full benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

The President’s first priority on taking office should have been lowering unemployment.  The quickest way to do that would have been a massive infrastructure bill.  This country has thousands of miles of roads, millions of miles of pipelines and electrical lines and thousands of bridges that need repair or replacement.  Getting that done would have done two things.  1. Put a lot of Americans doing productive work.  2. Placed our country in a better position to compete in the global economy.

He allowed the Defense Department to con him into a go slow approach to getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq.   As a result, getting out of Iraq took far longer that it should have and we are still in Afghanistan.  He should have given to orders and not taken any excuses.

He campaigned on closing Guantanamo Bay in 2008.  It is now 2012 and there is no sign that the prison will ever close.  Simple answer: he lied.  All of the prisoners could be transferred to a detention facility here in the US within a few months. 

The Defense Department needs to have a top down review of what they are spending all that money on.  For example, do we need 15 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers? Do we need all of those nuclear submarines?  Do we need to maintain military bases in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East?  Given the nature of the threat in today’s world, Big ticket weapon systems are not the answer.  We need to put DoD on a diet and be smarter about how we spend Defense dollars.

Give his poor performance in his first term, I cannot recommend a Vote for President Obama’s for Re-election.