The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world.
Friday, August 30, 2013, the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end America’s reign as the world’s sole indispensable superpower—or, alternatively, the day the sagacious Barack Obama peered into the Middle Eastern abyss and stepped back from the consuming void—began with a thundering speech given on Obama’s behalf by his secretary of state, John Kerry, in Washington, D.C. The subject of Kerry’s uncharacteristically Churchillian remarks, delivered in the Treaty Room at the State Department, was the gassing of civilians by the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
Obama, in whose Cabinet Kerry serves faithfully, but with some exasperation, is himself given to vaulting oratory, but not usually of the martial sort associated with Churchill. Obama believes that the Manichaeanism, and eloquently rendered bellicosity, commonly associated with Churchill were justified by Hitler’s rise, and were at times defensible in the struggle against the Soviet Union. But he also thinks rhetoric should be weaponized sparingly, if at all, in today’s more ambiguous and complicated international arena. The president believes that Churchillian rhetoric and, more to the point, Churchillian habits of thought, helped bring his predecessor, George W. Bush, to ruinous war in Iraq. Obama entered the White House bent on getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan; he was not seeking new dragons to slay. And he was particularly mindful of promising victory in conflicts he believed to be unwinnable. “If you were to say, for instance, that we’re going to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and build a prosperous democracy instead, the president is aware that someone, seven years later, is going to hold you to that promise,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, and his foreign-policy amanuensis, told me not long ago.
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WNU Editor: This Atlantic piece by Jeffery Goldberg on President Obama's foreign policy "doctrine" covers a lot of ground. Case in point ....
.... According to Leon Panetta, he has questioned why the U.S. should maintain Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge, which grants it access to more sophisticated weapons systems than America’s Arab allies receive.
I guess this explains why the Israelis are upset .... Israeli official links Netanyahu's canceled U.S. trip to defense aid hold-up (Reuters).
There is more ... and yes .... this is a must-read post.
President Barack Obama and Jeffrey Goldberg continue their long-running discussion of foreign policy in the Oval Office, January 26, 2016. Ruven Afanador
WNU Editor: Below is some reaction to the Atlantic's "The Obama Doctrine".
Portrait of a Presidential Mind -- James Bennet. The Atlantic
The best articulation yet of how President Obama sees the world -- Max Fisher, VOX
Obama denied Kerry requests for Syrian missile strikes -- The Hill
Obama ruled out new calls for missile strikes in Syria -- Politico
Obama says he’s proud of pulling back from Syria airstrikes -- AP
Barack Obama Was Furious at Hillary Clinton for Criticizing His ‘Don’t Do Stupid S**t’ Foreign Policy Doctrine -- Washington Free Beacon
1 comment:
Obama doctrine = fart ricocheting in a hot skillet.
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