Obama and Syria: words versus deeds
I have a new post up at American Thinker entitled “Obama and Syria: Words versus Deeds”:
In trying to puzzle out what might be going on with President Obama’s muddled, non-strategic, and fundamentally “unserious” approach to Syria, it helps to remember that Obama believes that words are as good as deeds, perhaps even better — especially when those words are uttered by Obama. He has concluded that words serve a convincing purpose in the moment, that one utterance does not have to be consistent with the next to be credible and serve that purpose, and that none of it has to be followed up with action to be effective.
And why wouldn’t he? Words have gotten him to the pinnacle of the US presidency without deeds ever having been necessary…
Neo,
Your column fits neatly with a thought I just jotted down on my blog:
Bush reacted to 9/11 by becoming a liberal. Nixon was a liberal. Both did more than talk the talk, they walked the walk. Yet, instead of being lauded by the putatively liberal Democrats, both were extraordinarily vilified by the Democrats, instead. I wonder whether the Democrats determined the two genuinely and effectively liberal Republican presidents needed to be slandered in order to hide the Democrats’ corrupted, hypocritical brand of liberalism.
I predicted on an earlier post, that the only political casualty from the Syria mess would be American Diplomacy, Obama, or Obama’s “fall guy / patsy”.
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Too many are just going to listen to the BS from the MSM. Obama is going to shift the blame for his mess. And the MSM will be his willing propaganda outlets.
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I have seen two blame shift approaches already.
1. the Republicans
2. the country of Israel
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Delusions of Grandeur? Sounds like it.
Eric, did Bush become a liberal because of 9/11? He ran as a ‘compassionate’ conservative. Maybe just ruling as a liberal is enough to infuriate the left.
Steve,
Good point.
In context of current events, though, I’m thinking more of Bush’s (and Nixon’s) foreign policy. Bush came into office with an IR realist agenda to roll back Clinton’s ‘mission creep’ and even cut down on long-standing missions like US Forces-Korea. That was Secretary Rumsfeld’s original primary project. But Bush responded to 9/11 firmly as a liberal.
Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that, because history gets recorded in words, Obama believes he can control history by controlling the words. And, hey, with the media and academia on his side, he can. At least for now.
Hah, evil has stumped another person on the net. Won’t be the last one.
I really have no idea what is going on with Syria. It’s possible that there are backchannel doings that none outside the administration know of, although I doubt that because of the propensity for leaking details to the media. This could be a very convoluted ploy to play off a weak hand against Iran and Russia, and none of the story line is apparent to us yet. President Obama may be trying to do what he claims and is simply incompetent and confused and weak. Or any number of other possibilities may be true, instead.
My personal guess is that President Obama is committed to a view that our past interventions were wrong and he wants to handle this national security/foreign policy opportunity in such a way as to tie the hands of any future President for decades to come. Either lose the vote in the Congress or strike ineffectually without Congressional approval, resulting in a backlash that makes it extremely difficult for future Presidents to use military force in any circumstance other than a direct attack on the homeland.
The specifics of the Syrian situation do not matter, it is only the presented opportunity to cause the combination of Congressional action and public reaction to rule out the use of American forces for many years to come. That would be a success in his view, I suspect, and worth the personal reputation hit he may take in the meantime.
“Obama’s youthful speechwriters — who know even less than he does — write the words he speaks . . . .”
And so is revealed the process for always being “the smartest man in the room.” Always hire idiots.
Taking off from and echoing Oliver Sacks, I believe we have: The Man Who Mistook His Tongue for a Law
Well written Neo- although posting an article about Obama in the “American Thinker” is ironic if you ask me — neither term applying to your subject in particularly strong way…
And it was certainly more polite than the way I’ve described him here before – as our first affirmative action president.
The Nobel Prize was another example in a long list of unearned rewards that have been heaped upon him since he was a boy. The Nobel immediately established him as a world class fraud, while further diminishing a prize that has become highly dubious at best.
Whenever I try to describe the voters and the culture that put this man in the White House, the film “Idiocracy” comes to mind. It’s a little further down the road, but not too.
I remember when Democrats told me that we were being too harsh on Obama in 2008. That we should just give him more time to fix America, due to Bush’s breaking of the us military and what not.
I often told them that if they want to see a Broken Military, they need to wait for a bit for a Democrat tyrant.
“why wouldn’t he? Words have gotten him to the pinnacle of the US presidency without deeds ever having been necessary…”
Yes it’s certainly worked for him. IMO, Obama’s interest in foreign policy only extends to its usefulness in reducing America’s ability to effect and respond to world events.
Obama’s apparent incompetence is the result of his intentional investment in facilitating the decline of American influence. Obama is intent on destroying to the greatest extent possible, America’s superpower status.
Obama’s ‘red line’ with Syria was strictly a political tactic to appease his idealistic liberal supporters and to minimize any negative impact upon democrat chances n the 2014 election.
Personally, I suspect that Assad is telling the truth, of course because it suits his survival and I strongly suspect that the chemical attacks came from the rebels. They have far more to gain by pinning the blame on Assad than Assad had to gain by using chemical weapons, after all he was winning before he used them.
If this is so, the rebels have forced Obama to either assist them or be hoisted upon his own petard.
Pretty sure Ogbama’s bank account will swell after this. Just on coincidence.
And the best part, his popularity according to Rasmussen has not significantly changed, not after Benghazi, the IRS, AP and a couple of others. This confirms my opinion of the mental agility of his supporters.
I knew he would get a lot of people killed, however this method is innovative and Obama deserves credit for originality. Watch he’ll get another peace prize for Syria.
Fanatics don’t generally change religious dogma all that often. They just tend to kill the heretics first.