George Rebane
The pen is mightier than the sword only to the extent that it can invoke the sword.
Every stream of lame confusion put out by this administration is claimed to be “perfectly clear” by Josh Earnest, the shamelessly earnest shill who currently mans the WH press room. That nothing this president says or promises contains any semblance of clarity is finally perfectly clear to his constituents and America’s allies.
Ms Lisa Navarrette of La Raza went on TV last week, pissed to the gills because Obama will not fulfill his promise to Hispanics that he would grant amnesty to 6M illegal aliens before the end of this summer. To the rest of us he assured that his new ‘immigration policy’ will not include amnesty for anyone. But to La Raza he is now revising his (wink-wink) promise that he’ll do them right soon after the November election. You see, he doesn’t want to lose any of those tenuous Demo voters in a close election, so he does what comes naturally – he lies, and his devoted thought-free sheeple will also do what comes naturally in the voting booth. Clear? Capice?
That our feckless chief community organizer is worse than a 2×4 with a painted face was made clear in two major essays published this weekend in the 7sep14 WSJ. I bring them to your attention under cover of false modesty since RR has been way ahead of this curve for years.
Historian Dr Robert Kagan at the liberal Brookings Institution writes a major analysis of the progress of western geo-strategic thought over the last century that has now developed into a pretty hopeless quagmire (‘America’s Dangerous Aversion to Conflict’). He argues that “the U.S. increasingly yearns to escape the harsh realities of war, but as recent events make clear, raw force remains a key element in international politics.”
Decades of progressive pabulum drilled into our heads that ‘wars never solve anything’ – when in fact war or its imminent prospect have prompted the only solutions in international affairs – is now so dominant in what passes for thought in the west, that the world’s bad guys are doing exactly what they have done for millennia when such nonsense rises to the top. Kagan reviews the strategies of Germany and Japan during the inter-bellum years of the last century. Our president has understood none of this, but you can bet that his handlers read such pieces, know exactly who is the intended target, and are sensitive to how such prominent messages will affect the Dems chances in the voting booths this November.
Nationally syndicated columnist Peggy Noonan takes a distinctly Socratic approach as she leads her administration readers through a series of questions that, correctly answered, point to a family of strategy options that have lain fallow in this White House. In ‘The World Needs a Clarion’ she concludes that “Obama can't lead a coalition if nobody can follow his thinking.”
Noonan opens with, “It is a muddle, a murk and a desperate-looking thing, the president on the subject of the Islamic State.” This was also the message from America’s allies at last week’s NATO summit in Wales. Their leaders told our messiah that he needs to sit on something besides his thumb and re-assume America’s historical leadership position in world affairs, especially when bad guys from all quarters recognize that we have a junior varsity player at the helm. But apparently that message did get through to others at State, Defense, and 1600 Pennsylvania.
Today we were told that things have recently been so perfectly clear about our foreign policy that this Wednesday President Obama will go on national TV to remind us and the world how inattentive we have been as he will try to spell it all out again. See, hubris hides shame every time.
Lucky Strike Extra! Henry Kissinger, that perennial sage of realpolitik, has written World Order, a timely book that instructs us how world order has been maintained and also forfeited over the centuries – please fasten your seatbelts. Book review here.
[17sep14 update] I concur with the points on the House floor made by Rep Tom McClintock (here)regarding our response to ISIS.
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