Answer:
No.
Who says?
America has been in great peril in times past. Divine Providence has always been with her despite the naysayers. God's purpose for America may have yet be fulfilled.
Wow, Salon’s articles are literally written by monkeys.
I am impressed
Guided by Divine Providence? Doesn't anyone over at Salon own a dictionary?
Show me a country América hasn’t helped and or Improved by our Christian ideals and precisely because God moves us to help.
Then consider the world has been vastly Improved by our inventiveness.
Ice Cubes = Cold Beer and Ice Cold Pepsi.
Coca-Cola too.
Levis
American Pie. Not just the movie but, the kind that has cinnamon in the crust.
Ketchup for french fries.
McDonald’s
Cowboy movies.
Billy Graham
GOD’S WAYS are FAR ABOVE our Understanding
God does chastise those he loves.
that being said there’s a distinct possibility that Obama is a part of a chastening process.
The reason Gates was chosen by 0bama for SecDef was not any subtle agreement that 0bama and his staff would concentrate on domestic matters and leave the international ones to the apparatchiks, but that his team had literally no one up to the job. We are only now becoming aware of just how very shallow and incompetent this team of ideological wonks turned out to be in terms of management of government, but it was written in stone from the very beginning for anyone to see.
This team's core skills are the acquisition of power and the manipulation of information necessary to maintain it. It is at that point that what the author terms The Program becomes integrated with the domestic aspirations of the 0bama team. Surveillance on every American? Private military forces for sundry departments of the federal government? Those may or may not be useful in any War on Terror but they certainly are jolly useful for war on domestic political opposition.
I disagree with the author's thesis insofar as any absolution of the 0bama administration through sheer incompetence. On the contrary, they're very much in charge of the "drone murders", et al. The notion of 0bama allowing the apparatchiks their head if only they will allow him similar latitude within the country ignores the fact that it's all one large machine now despite the window dressing.
Clearly this intelligence machine is something the author hoped would be reformed by 0bama despite the complete absence of any background, skills, or accomplishments in that arena by any of "the ones we've been waiting for." That tells you more about the author's credulity than anything else. It wasn't, in fact, but neither are its apparatchiks running loose with the ball. So far as it is useful to the Democrats, it will remain.