America sending out wrong messages locally and internationally
The entire embarrassing scandal over how Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and ABC’s Good Morning America host Robin Roberts hustled public opinion in favor of racist hoaxster Jussie Smollett has sent out a clear message that justice is not as important as race-influenced crime. And that perception has sent out an even wider and uglier message about how our national leaders are leading us in the wrong direction internationally, including with the terrorist government of Iran. Corrupt politics domestically is no different than corrupt politics internationally.
By Ray Hanania
It’s bad enough that crime is rampant in Chicago and spreading throughout the suburbs. The Jussie Smollett scandal is icing on an ugly cake.
Why does Smollett get a pass? Because he is friends with former President Barack Obama and First Lady Hillary Clinton, and because his race makes him a priority ward for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, one of the worst county prosecutors in the country? The most disgusting was the softball interview Robin Roberts, the host of ABC’s Good Morning America, did with Jussie Smollett on Feb. 14, 2019. Roberts is pathetic. Watch the interview for yourself.
The Smollett case is about lying and it’s no surprise that one of his attorneys claims that the judge in his case “lunged” at her. It sounds more like a hoax intended to give Smollett an excuse to appeal what sounds certainly to be his conviction.
Chicago crime and Smollett’s abuse of the criminal justice system are so troubling and distracting that many people are not able to focus on the trouble brewing over the horizon. Worse is the concern that the United States, the “leader of the free world” and “the world’s most powerful nation” is doing nothing about any of it.
What’s the point of being the world’s most powerful nation if you don’t use that power?
Last week, Russia’s tyrant Vladimir Putin ordered the ouster of many of the American diplomats at its Moscow embassy. At the same time, Russia’s Mullah pals in Iran have been exploiting the sleepy policies of the administration of President Joe Biden.
Russian troops have been building up along the border of the Ukraine where it is clear Putin is planning some sort of invasion. There is no doubt that Putin is doing everything to drag Russian back to the old days of the Soviet Union and a Cold War with the West.
For the past six months, during their 7th meeting in Vienna, Biden has been trying to revive an agreement that would put Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon in check. But the Iranians are “stonewalling” the talks so that they can advance their nuclear program.
During a State Department briefing I was invited to participate in for my Arab News newspaper assignments, senior officials made it clear Biden is not planning to take tougher action against the Iranians.
When you step back from what Russia is doing along its border with the Ukraine, and how the Iranians are leading our country by the nose, you see a region that has serious problems.
During my podcast this week with former Congressman Bill Lipinski, “Two Guys on Politics,” we both agreed that America and the West are being dragged into a new “Cold War” with the Russians and that the Russians are building up their power base right under our noses.
What are we doing? It doesn’t look like much. The region from the Ukraine to Afghanistan consists of countries in total chaos. Biden basically abandoned Afghanistan. The Taliban is on the rise and they are certainly not American allies.
In the Middle East, Iraq is carved up into regions of violence. Russia is strengthening its powerbase in Syria, bolstering the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad.
If Russian controls the Ukraine, Putin will be in position to threaten Turkey, a secular Muslim country that despite the political rhetoric is one of the last bastions, along with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, against religious fanaticism.
Russian and Iran are gaining troubling influence, but no one is doing anything about it.
We need to put Russia in check, and we need to cut the knees out from under Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It doesn’t help that we close our eyes to the massive nuclear arsenal Israel maintains.
Not in this frightening equation is the trouble we have with China, which holds a huge financial mortgage over American lives. The amount of products made there for America is troublesome.
Don’t think former President Donald Trump was any better. Trump was tougher than Biden in his rhetoric, but Trump undermined himself by sinking into the petty muck with his petty critics. It weakened his policies and his goals.
What we need, but what we don’t have, is a President who is tough enough to confront Russia, Iran and China without getting us into a world war. Someone like former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan wasn’t perfect but he knew how to stand-up to international threats. He also empowered our police to confront our domestic challenges, too.
Perception drives how the world views us. Putin, Assad, the Taliban and the crazed Iranian Mullahs are much like the drug dealers and gangbangers in Chicago who see weakened policies as an invitation to do more wrong.
That’s frightening.
( Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter. A political analyst and CEO of Urban Strategies Group, Hanania’s opinion columns on mainstream issues are published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. His Middle East columns are published in the Arab News. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at rghanania@gmail.com.)
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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