Almost But Not Quite

So I’m scanning the online headlines this morning, like I always do, and I see something that makes me stop. The headline reads “Obama to world: Don't expect America to fix it all”.

When I saw it I thought, “Holy Crap! He said something I agree with!”, so I clicked on the article to read it. And sure enough, he said “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone”. “AMEN!” I thought.

If he’d just followed out the logic of that one statement we’d have been okay and I would have finally found common ground with him on something. But then he blew it by talking about global initiatives, world communities and the like.

This “world community” stuff is a bunch of hooey. There is no “world community”. Frankly, the world has been treated like an American community for far too long.

Whenever earthquakes, floods, tsunamis or other natural disasters strike a foreign country, who is the first group they call?

When the U.N. needs humanitarian workers and peacekeepers to enter an out of control African country where people are dying and rioting in the streets for lack of food, to whom does the UN turn to bring order from chaos?

When a disease breaks out and begins to eradicate people by the thousands, who steps in and not only develops the vaccine, but delivers and administers it to keep the disease in check?

When a country’s economy begins to collapse, who is asked to loan it money and prop it up?

When genocide begins somewhere in the world, who are the first people called upon to put a stop to it?

Who are the people chastised most if they let genocide continue?

When someone flees a country because of despotism, torture and rape, where do they go?

When and Indian, Pakistani, Saudi, Sudanese, Egyptian, African, Chinese, Korean or Russian national wants to give their kid the best college education in the world so they can come back and help out their village or nation, where do they send them?

Obama was right when he said, “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility”. It’s time the world starting taking on its share of responsibility. It’s time these countries, who take our money, use our education systems, use our generous spirit and the lives of our young men started solving some of their own problems and stopped begging us for help then turning on us once they’re back on their feet.

It’s time America focused its efforts on AMERICA, not the world. We’re having problems on a scale unprecedented in our history. Between the war on terror, natural disasters, the energy crisis, the collapse of the economy, out of control congressional spending, a growing national debt and a shrinking national product we’ve got a lot on our plate.

We can make the world a better place, by dealing with the log in our own eyes before removing the splinters from the eyes of the world.

And Obama should have said so.