Allen West: Obama May Want His Policies to Fail

With a record 20 percent of households on food stamps, former Florida Rep. Allen West says it's time to stop saying President Barack Obama's policies are failing.

They may be performing exactly as intended, he says.

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West, a Republican, said he recently reread the Cloward-Piven strategy, proposed by two sociologists and political activists in 1966. The purpose of the strategy, offered to Democrats at the time, was to overload the welfare system so that people could be given "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty."

Obama's economic policies may be intended to do something similar, West hinted during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."

"We're seeing an incredible growth of the welfare nanny state; we're seeing the poverty rolls explode; we're seeing the food stamp rolls explode; we're seeing more dependency on government largesse and programs," he said. "We're seeing a desperation and a despondency out there that's being created by this administration."

Other Republicans have said Obama's Affordable Care Act is intended not to work properly, but rather to fail so a single-payer, government-run system can be installed.

West, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, also called the relaxation of military rules to allow turbans, tattoos, and piercings for religious reasons "a horrible idea."

West said the rules are part of a social re-engineering of the military, and will eventually affect troop readiness.

He pointed to recent complaints about a Nativity scene in a Guantanamo Bay dining area and the removal of "under God" in the honor code oath at the U.S. Air Force Academy, saying that to allow haircuts and turbans for religious exercise is hypocritical.

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But, he added, he should "have seen it coming when Nidal Hasan was allowed to keep his beard during trial."

Hasan was the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others in the Fort Hood, Texas, mass shooting in 2009.