It appears Barack Obama got what he wanted from Monday night's speech on Libya. He got just the right camera angle so the media could portray him with the trusty halo made so popular during the 2008 election cycle. If I were the suspicious type I'd suggest he rehearses these shots.The above image accompanies a muddled opinion piece in the NY Daily News that claims Obama made a clear, principled case for our military action in Libya.
But now, in the first major test of a crisis rearing its head on his watch, many have derided Obama's approach as the professor's way of war. So the pundits were craving clarity Monday night when he took the stage at the National Defense University in Washington, clamoring for something like an Obama Doctrine, a few snappy sentences that encapsulate his foreign policy, a formula where you plug in the variables and get your answer each and every time.Obamastic fashion? Say what? And who out there suggested we allow a humanitarian disaster to unfold? If anything most critics suggested we act long before we did. Besides, if anyone wants humanitarian disasters, there are plenty of places in Africa that fits the bill.
It didn't happen. It was never going to happen. Nor should it have happened.
In typically Obamastic fashion, he rejected the arguments of those who suggested we should have allowed a humanitarian disaster to unfold while the world watched (that would have "been a betrayal of who we are"), and similarly dismantled the arguments of those who want a more aggressive, expansive, expensive campaign.
So while this columnist extols the Obamastic professorial virtues of our fearless leader, he then contradicts himself.
Disagree with the military action in Libya, by all means. I'm not sold. Our military is already overextended, and protesters are being suppressed from Yemen to Bahrain to Syria, which are all more critical to our national security. Congress wasn't sufficiently consulted. We don't know whether or how we'll bring Moammar Khadafy down, and it's possible we only postponed, rather than prevented, a slaughter. We know very little about the rebels, and apart from broadly lionizing the Libyan people, Obama shed no light Monday night on why they're bound to be better than the devil we know.We have no clue what's to happen down the road, but at least Obama explained it all in professorial Obamastic fashion. Thanks for clearing that up.
The JournOList media can stick all the halos they want on this man's head but the simple fact is that 60% of the country are aware or roughly aware that
ReplyDelete1) The economy is in shambles.
2) Food/clothing/gas prices are skyrocketing.
3) We've been thrust into War #3.
4) Obamacare is still with us - it's unconstitutional and half the states are suing to get out of it.
5) Obama is strangely detached from the country, preferring to play golf, attend parties, go on vacations, and talk NCAA brackets.
6) Our foreign policy is a disaster.
7) Virtually everyone is either directly affected or knows someone who is broke, unemployed, or on the battlefield.
So the JournOLists can play this game all they want but thigs are getting worse, not better. And there's two years to go.
Finally, let me go on record as saying the Republicans have done absolutely nothing since they took the Congress. Has anyone even heard from them lately?