Conrad Black: Obama Scandals Crippling U.S. Power at Crucial Time
Tuesday, 28 May 2013 08:08 AM
The Obama administration — and the United States — is wasting valuable energy getting bogged down in scandals at a time when major global shifts are challenging its crucial role as a beacon of freedom, says best-selling author, biographer and journalist Conrad Black.
"I don't think this is, to be fair, a particularly scandalous administration," says Black, a biographer of Richard Nixon whose new book deals with the history of America's emergence as a global power. "I don't think it's very successful, but I don't think they've done anything that should cause the president to be under a moral cloud."
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A Canadian-born former newspaper publisher who has headed some of the largest newspapers in the world, Black’s latest is "Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Independence to World Leadership."
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The work chronicles America's strategic development into a world superpower from 1754 to 1992. Black details the specific strategic decisions of such statesmen as Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt that transformed the world and established America's role in it.
"Abraham Lincoln masterfully handled the whole task of finding the underlying cause of the Civil War: slavery," Black tells Newsmax. "Franklin D. Roosevelt did a brilliant job of tying the American national interest to the survival of the democracy, with the defeats of the Nazis and Japanese imperialists.
"These were all tremendous achievements that wouldn't necessarily happen just because the United States is a rich, well-populated country."
Black, 68, calls China one of America's rivals -- not adversaries -- and it's imperative that "they click with each other. The Americans need to make sure that their allies in the area, the Japanese, the Philippines, the South Koreans and others, are not intimidated by the Chinese."
But radical Islam, Black says, poses a clear threat to the United States.
"It is an enemy. It's a nuisance and it's a terrible nuisance. They commit these atrocities, and they kill a lot of people."
Regarding the Middle East, Black tells Newsmax that "no durable achievement will be attained until there is a general recognition in the Muslim world of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
"The Islamic forces in general do not accept that, and Palestine could have its state next week if they would accept that. Israel should not be encouraged to and should not negotiate with anyone who does not accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state."
Black also wrote the 2007 biography, "Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full." That president, of course, faced impeachment proceedings over Watergate before he ultimately resigned.
The bevy of scandals facing the Obama administration -- the four Americans killed in Benghazi last Sept. 11, the Justice Department's secret seizure of telephone records of The Associated Press, and the IRS' targeting of conservative groups -- has led to similar impeachment calls.
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That would not be good for the United States, Black tells Newsmax.
"We just shouldn't be talking in those terms," Black adds. "We shouldn't be getting into this. I would hope that the powers that be in Washington would do something to try and reform the situation, but they're not doing it.
"You have a prosecutorial glasnost -- and it's out of control."
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