Who is this that "Makes Nations Tremble"?

by Will Grigg
Jul. 08, 2013

“What kind of a man is he that he makes the whole nation tremble?”

Those words were spoken by a waitress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, during the visit of Barack Obama to the city. Mr. Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, had gone to the Tanzanian capital to commemorate the 15th anniversary of a terrorist bombing at the U.S. embassy. This event inflicted all of the disruptions and inconveniences that attend every presidential visit, as security personnel – including grim-faced men with sniper rifles – locked up huge sections of the city.

Just hours after Obama paid respects at the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, his administration quietly ordered two European countries – France and Portugal – to deny access to their airspace to a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia. Morales had suggested that Bolivia might grant asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, so his plane was forced down in Austria where it was searched by police.

This was a hijacking – an act of official terrorism committed against an elected head of state of a country with which the US is not at war. The President who authorized it commands a nuclear arsenal and routinely kills innocent people through remote-controlled drones. That’s why he causes nations to tremble.