Continuing to Vote "Present"

You may recall that during the period between the election and the inauguration in January that Joe Biden said:

"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Turns out that for the first time in his career, Biden was right. We are being tested and it's from Iran, North Korea and Somalia.

So how's Obama reacting? Not so well. He has not said a peep about any of those being held and the media has effectively buried the stories. The American people are ready to stand with him but Obama has chosen to sit on his hands.

Here we have Americans being held--two by nations that President Bush named as part of the Axis of Evil--and he has opted to do nothing. In other words, he's doing what he always has done when a difficult issue faces him, he is voting "present".

We are seeing our enemies try to get a measure of the man and he's not measuring up at all. First it was arresting reporters under dubious charges and now it's escalated to attempted high jacking and kidnapping--a tactic that never would have been used when Bush was in office as those who perpetrated the act knew we would respond forcefully.

Now we respond by not responding, by ignoring what is happening and hoping things will get better. So I say to Biden that we are ready to stand with Obama if he would actually say something--anything--about the fate of our fellow citizens.