Why We STILL Need America – and Obama

By Shlomo  Maital

Long Ranger

 As a child, I recall listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio.  The Lone  Ranger wasn’t alone; his Indian friend Kemo Sabe rode with him. Together they fought evil, injustice, crime and helped the helpless.

  Today America is again The Lone Ranger.  Ebola outbreak?  America sends 3,000 soldiers to set up as many as 17 emergency treatment centers in Liberia.  Why? No other country can or will.  And Ebola is a threat to all of Africa and perhaps the world. Liberia is an entire nation under lock-down!  And health workers and journalists are murdered in Guinea, by suspicious villagers who think they are bringing the disease rather than fighting it.

  ISIS? (Obama is right.   It is really ISIL,  Islamic State in the Levant, because ISIL believes they will establish the Caliphate throughout the Mideast, including Lebanon and Israel. What you call things DOES matter!).   America to the rescue, leading a ‘coalition’, but have no doubt, most of the military action will be American.  Because Europe has given up defense spending and prefers to shelter under American defense spending.

    If there is a major humanitarian disaster somewhere in the world, that takes resources and abilities,  it will be largely America to the rescue. 

    So, yes, we can criticize America, Americans and their leader President Obama.  But as many have noted,  at present there is no other country who can come close to replacing America, in its will and ability to come to the rescue, like The Lone  Ranger.  And yes, America does stumble, fail to fully understand the cultures in which it operates, and yes, it does endlessly debate its decisions to intervene abroad.  But in the end,  like The Long Ranger, America is there.

    So – thanks, America.  We really do give you a bad rap.