Presidential Pettiness

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That’s almost exactly what Bush said about the UN’s fecklessness over Iraq. “The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations,” he warned in September 2002. “Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence?”

Yet all of that has been airbrushed out of Obama’s version of history.

Now, let’s take a look at Obama’s subtle attack on the Clinton administration’s foreign policy record. “In just one month,” Obama gushed, “the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre and establish a no-fly zone with our allies and partners.”

Wow. That’s almost on par with his 2008 Berlin speech, when the ever-humble Obama predicted that his election would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

But it wasn’t enough for Obama just to hail his achievements in Libya. To drive home the point, he needed to contrast his record with the lesser men who sat in the Oval Office before him: “To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians. It took us 31 days.”

There’s the swipe at the Clinton administration. What Obama didn’t say or doesn’t care to learn is that in Bosnia, the Europeans kept America at arms length. A leading European diplomat typified the European view in this first post-Cold War crisis by calling Bosnia “the hour of Europe.” Washington took the hint and stepped aside. It would be a fateful decision. As historian William Pfaff notes in The Wrath of Nations, “In the Bosnian crisis, the United States didn’t act, so everyone failed to act.”

In other words, an unspoken reason the Europeans were cajoling Washington to get involved in Libya was the Balkan debacle.

Obama’s goldilocks approach to the office he holds—that he has somehow struck the perfect balance that eluded his predecessors—is not only dripping with hubris, but it also conveys a kind of myopia usually reserved for college kids. As a self-described “student of history,” Obama should know that history didn’t begin on January 20, 2009.

A more appropriate, more gracious, more politically effective approach to take in announcing the Libya intervention—in addition to seeking Congressional authorization before seeking the endorsement of the Arab League and UN—would have been for Obama to concede that his administration is learning from the precedents set by earlier administrations; that his preferred method of moral suasion and apology tours was no more effective at making the world’s rogues compliant than Bush’s hard-line approach; and that the world doesn’t magically bend to America’s will because of the pleasant sounding words of a president.

Alan W. Dowd writes on defense and security issues.

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  • Pierce

    Lets face it, Obama, from my point of view is a PINHEAD, not a PATRIOT and becoming more so with each passing day.

  • kdhy

    Excellent article. Obama is a clueless 'schoolboy'— NOT a strong, intelligent, insightful leader of this country. He spends a great deal of his time explaining why 'others' did everything wrong in order to 'prove' that he is doing everything right. His charisma got him elected the first time. Will it get him elected the second? I am constantly amazed at all who listen to this man/boy and fully BELIEVE that just b/c he says something, it makes it so. No, NO it doesn't. God help us all if he is reelected.

    • tanstaafl

      "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

    • Jim_C

      Who's going to beat him? I don't see any real candidates out there yet from the GOP.

      • Andres de Alamaya

        You are absolutely right and this is a major worry. The only man I've got a glimpse of that has his head clear on the most important issue – Islam – is Allen West. I pray he has the same smarts in all other departments and that the GOP gets behind him. The rest come across as lost nonentities.

  • geez

    What's hilarious is that Bozobama is in lockstep with almost all the previous Bush policy, from Gitmo to Iraq. All his big shot, community organizer, no experience promises were nothing but hot air and in many cases lies. He says whatever it takes to appease his base while trying to calm the masses, much like dictators Chavez and Castro. He's an empty suit with a teleprompter just waiting for the next line to read. He has no original thought of his own and no leadership qualities. Why else would he do whatever it takes to hide his past, his past writings? Because it shows his lack of intelligence and understanding of leadership. Bozobama loves the fact he can hide behind nato and un if things go bad, like a small child hides behind their mothers skirt. What great leader in history would have been so elated to turn over their military and decision making to others? When you boil it down he's selling out the US sovereignty plain and simple. I compare Bozobama, the Clinton's and many more elected leaches both left and right to the character in Superman, Lex Luther. All they want after handing the US over to the one world government is a small island called Australia. This clown has to go in 2012… let's put him on the book tour or let him go back to what he called his true home… Kenya.

  • Texasron

    Obama seems to be channeling earlier presidents. First FDR, then Eisenhower, then Reagan, and now George Bush. This guy can not lead.

  • USMCSniper

    Some people have the skill to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote was translated into English from an article appearing in the Czech Republic as published in the Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2010…. In fact, the sentiments expressed, which a large number of Americans now agree with, are from a reader comment made in reference to the events of that week in Prague:

    "The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

    • geez

      That's naked truth.

    • Andres de Alamaya

      That is the truth and the tragedy. The decline and fall of Rome took centuries. We're doing it in decades.

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  • jgreene

    Unless, this coalition of numbskulls led by President Arrogance gets lucky Khadaffi is going to survive. Worse case for Khadaffi is he will end up in another country.

    But what WAS the rationale for this Kinetic Military Action? Some BS doctrine about saving Libyans from what? How about those millions in the Sudan? How about supporting (at least with words) the Iranian people from the crazy 7th Century Murderous Clowns running that country who are about to perfect a nuclear weapon?

    This scatter-brained incompetent left wing radical in the White House is out of control and his foreign policy seems like something out of a Keystone Kops movie.

    The House of Representatives has to say ENOUGH! No more Kinetic Military Activities interfering with a Civil War between barbarian Muslims. Screw them.

    • Jim_C

      This is our foreign policy, jgreene. I agree it sucks but it ain't new to Obama. fact is, if we left Libya alone conservatives would be all over Obama for staying out of it (you watch the news, right?)

  • Jim_C

    I agree with Texasron's post, above. Obama seems to want to "try on" different presidential styles.

    However the best quote on Obama remains: " Both the Right and the Left expected Obama to be Hugo Chavez; both were disappointed when he turned out not to be."

    • Fred Dawes

      Obama is a tool of big money, "people end of story", The story is about to end, within 20 years this nation will be just like mexico in all things and will look just like a butt that is really reek and the whitehouse will be a really stink place full of bad odors coming from the butt of the third world monkey PEOPLE. And guy's a people make a nation not the government in fact a government is just a side-show of the people.

  • Fred Dawes

    as PEOPLE We are all fools and can't really see facts in front of our own butts, in fact face it this nation is BUTT, JUST LOOK WHO IS Our main butt, God get down here and help us all before this butt starts the third world war inside this nation.

    I for one cannot listen to a butt like obama talk about anything this guy is just a tool.

  • Fred Dawes

    well yes if the bankers want him for 4-more years he will be in office if not someother monkey will be in that office, and if obama is our next butt-wipe what new? its all in the game.

  • Tomstobamster

    I like Obama. (OMG I gotta get outa here before I get cybershot by you freaks! ) What is this, the open minded rational thinking debate club that will clearly look at both sides of every issue before struggling to solve problems instead of spewing ignorant CAPITALIZED nonsense. We are going down because no one wants to think before they speak.

  • Harless C.

    It still is amazing to me that this leaderless, souless, lying Hussein guy was ever elected to the highest office in our United States. Did people not vote? I would not shake hands with Obama, but if ever it were to happen I'd be sure to count my fingers afterward. There has to be a person in our country who has the mind and ideas of a man like Ron Paul, but nowdays he'd have to be young, have good hair, and 'look good' on TV; perhaps having these shiny and shallow attributes he could garner some votes. If only Dr. Ron Paul were younger I truly believe our people would vote in such a 'straight talker'. The waning middle class real people of this country (not the rich and corporations) are the backbone of this country and we are over carrying everyone else! I still cannot believe that someone named Hussein is 'our' president – what were people thinking?