In spite of Vladimir Putin’s wishes, George W. Bush has succeeded in getting NATO’s endorsement for his plan to erect a missile shield in Europe. Quite a remarkable feat for a man who’s led his country into a succession of criminal military disasters. After all, hasn’t Bush done incalculable damage to America’s image abroad?
Not according to NATO. The organization’s leaders will be releasing a statement recognizing “the substantial contribution to the protection of allies . . . to be provided by the U.S.-led system,” according to senior American officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the statement’s release. Shocking praise for a nation which has lost so much face internationally.
Putin, sadly, did succeed in getting enough member states to block Georgia’s and Ukraine’s paths toward NATO membership. Bush had this to say:
NATO’s door must remain open to other nations in Europe that share our love for liberty and demonstrate a commitment to reform and seek to strengthen their ties with the trans-Atlantic community . . . We must give other nations seeking membership a full and fair hearing.
Strange words for a unilateralist cowboy bent on bulldozing his way across the globe.
For years, pundits and politicians have been bemoaning America’s loss of global credibility under the leadership of George W. Bush. Who hasn’t heard about all the “rebuilding” of trust that awaits America in the near future. Hillary Clinton’s website proclaims:
The next president’s most urgent task will be to restore America’s standing in the world to promote our interests, ensure our security, and advance our values.
Is it really the restoration of America’s image that should be on Hillary’s mind?
Her website statement goes on:
America is stronger when we lead the world through alliances and build our foreign policy on a strong foundation of bipartisan consensus.
Kind of like what Bush just did in Bucharest.
And of course, as Senator Patrick Leahy said in his endorsement of Barack Obama, “We need a president who can reintroduce America to the world. . . .” But there’s apparently stronger pro-American sentiment to be found in the most skeptical corners of NATO’s Belgium headquarters than in the pulpit of Barack Obama’s Chicago church.
Bush’s greatest foreign policy misjudgment was not one of exclusion and force, but rather inclusion and trust: He thought, a few years back, that the U.S. had a partner in Putin. The damage of that misjudgment, it’s heartening to see, can be somewhat mitigated by America’s standing as a leader among free nations.
Platitude man is a one trick pony. It will be a very long 4 years.
Ain’t nobody leavin’ Iraq. Just as the CIA and State Dept. did everything they could to assure failure in Iraq, time has passed them by and others are making the schedule now. If BHO wanted them to start moving troops out tomorrow, it couldn’t be done. It’ll be a surprise if he can evacuate Gitmo.
Abe— Its the doctrine of Fakism. I agree. Fluffy language for the masses to feel “happy”, policy is undercover, Press provides smoke and mirrors.
Reagan’s 1st Inaugural is a great response.
If casualties stay low in Iraq, he’ll leave the troops there forever. I might miss my guess, but Iraq is probably 79th on his list of priorities right now. It’s going to take a BIG flareup in violence to get his attention.
That’s what “begin to leave” means.
“But if that respect is not soon paid back in kind with details about how he intends to serve our interests, he’ll lose our support.”– Abe Greenwald
Obama might lose Abe Greenwald’s support? Say it ain’t so. Just when did Obama gain your support, Abe? And why do you keep peddling the virulently anti-Obama rhetoric if you respect and support him?
Oh, I get it, it’s not an honest argument. You are being disingenuous in a weak attempt to score political points. Better luck next time.
chuck, at least parts of State worked their butts off to make Iraq a success; CIA – don’t know that whole story, but have the impression they did some good work too (“tribal relations” and targeting Iranian personnel).
Abe, let us hope that the vagueness and dodging on Iraq mask an indecision that will cautiously hedge on the safe side. A lack of political will or leadership capacity can manifest itself as failure to take the initiative (sadly, fairly likely WRT offensive actions that may become neccessary the next 4 years – see Clinton years) or as an aversion to changing the status quo such as that in Iraq. In any case it would actually be quite reasonable to announce down the road that with the SOFA and strategic relationship pact in place and in light of ongoing developments, withdrawal to the major bases would be an interim step and full withdrawal awaits further developments. Let’s face it, this guy will have infinite leeway with the Beltway and the media no matter what he does, so I’m with chuck martel in forecasting no withdrawal any time soon.
What concerns me is that this will become the new business model for successful major campaigns–to the detriment of our election system. First, articulate a vision in the most vacuous possible generalities, of “hope” and “change” or growth, renewal, rebirth, or whatever metaphors and ideals the moment apparently requires. Then, when pressed for specifics (which will happen rarely for a Democrat, constantly for a Republican), speak in terms of both-this-and-that, or neither-this-nor-that language. We must defend ourselves at the same time as we honor the values that have made America a beacon of justice and freedom around the world; we should neither alienate Russia nor permit it to act in an irresponsible manner, etc. Then, when those on the other side object that you are not giving genuine specifics, criticize them for engaging in the old politics of partisan sniping, and portray them as old curmudgeons missing out on the wonderful new movement. “What they fail to understand is that this movement is not about me, it’s about you,” and all that blather.
The assumption of many, early in the campaign, seemed to be that Obama would eventually have to offer details. Surely he could not sustain an entire campaign on the fumes of such gaseous rhetoric? Well, Obama had a lot of gas, so to speak, or a lot of fumes to keep him going, and he’s sustained his progress with airy unicorns-in-the-sky rhetoric not only through the primary election, not only through the general election, but even through the transition and now the inauguration.
Is this good for our democracy? Aren’t we better off when politicians speak eloquently not only of lofty ideals but also of concrete action plans? Aren’t we better off when we know the exact stances our candidate would take–whether he will stand with Russia or with Georgia and Poland, for instance, and how exactly he will stand with Poland, whether he will defend the missile shield, and so forth? Obama has remained a fill-in-the-blank space. Call him the Mad-Lib President. His words are so lacking in substance that one can fill in the blanks with whatever promises one suspects Obama is offering. America will be worse off if more American politicians follow Obama’s example.
Honestly, I hear everyone praising his speech-writer, and sometimes Favreau deserves it. But often I feel as though these are the sorts of speeches I might have written as a college student–and then later I would have been embarrassed that I had written such naive fluff.
Here’s where your righteous speech falls apart, Abe:
“But if that respect is not soon paid back in kind with details about how he intends to serve our interests, he’ll lose our support.”
No he won’t, Abe. It’ll take a lot more than non-specificity for the adoring crowds to notice that their messiah has no clothes. Remember Nixon, Clinton and Bush II were all reelected by sizeable margins at the height of their public humiliation and exposure. And no one considered them messiahs! Americans follow their leaders with a loyalty that defies cognitive dissonance. Good thing we have term limits.
Come on, Dan, take it easy. Obama is just waving off Iraq with the absolutely vague “begin to leave responsibly” stuff. The bottom line is that he doesn’t care much about Iraq any more. That’s not a criticism – most Americans don’t care much about Iraq any more. It will take a huge explosion of violence to get him to do much of anything on the issue.
If there’s a comment of the day, for today, I think Ahithophel’s is a good choice.
Abe, quit lying, or at least do some research before spouting off, one or the other. Just for starters, on don’t ask don’t tell: it will be repealed in due time.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/14/obama.gays.military/
I’d also like to get a sense of all the verifiably concrete things that have been laid out in other inaugural addresses. When Reagan said
“The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God’s help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. 38
And, after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans. God bless you, and thank you.”
Where is the non cliche? Where is the concrete foreign policy provision?
Abe, you’re a joke.
What a bunch of whining fools. Obama has promised to get us out of iraq – the military has already created an accelerated plan to get us out of iraq (based on Obama’s requirements) – we will soon be out of iraq.
“The top U.S. military officer said Tuesday the Defense Department is developing plans to get troops quickly out of Iraq and into Afghanistan to battle a more confident and successful Taliban.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Associated Press in an interview that the military can make the changes President-elect Barack Obama wants in both wars…”
It’s only day one you fools.
I think that we are all still basking in the glow of that wonderful leftist Obama’s “reverend” offering that touching racist prayer:
“that whites embraces that which is right”
Can’t you just feel everybody coming together behind the “mistake”, I mean “messiah”.
Obama can’t offer specifics because he has none. You don’t learn international affairs, economics or leadership as a back bench state senator from the south side of Chicago or “community organizing”.
Only the stupidity of a leftists would look at this doofus and believe he is a savior of the nation. As if the nation needs a savior, the only ones need saving are those boobs stupid enough to follow liberalism for the past two decades. You know the one, borrowing money which they have no intention or means of repaying, giving hundreds of thousands in loans to people without jobs or skills or forgoing education for freewheeling lifestyles with numerous children for whom they rely on government to provide.
Of course, as the Idiot-in-Chief, Obama’s plan to rescue those delinquents is to take wealth away from those who lived responsibly and make their obligations. And not only tax those who have made sound decisions but also those of our children and our childrens’ children by exploding the debt of our bloated government to fund more left wing causes and debacles.
When Barry says “Everyone is going to have to sacrifice” he means those who were not deadbeats and delinquents. All so that Barry and his bank of scum like Reid, Pelosi, Franks, Dodd and others can get re-elected by those same deadbeats and delinquents.
To #10, thank you. To #11, and #12, I take it your point is that the inaugural is not a moment to wade through the murky waters of policy details. I agree with you on that. The point is that Obama has floated along on streaming white clouds of rhetoric not for one day–but for two years now. It may be a good (or at least an effective) campaign strategy to promise all things to all people, and refuse to be pinned down. But it is not a good governing strategy, and it fails to show us whether or not the candidate will be an effective governor. It also falls short of the responsibility of the good-faith campaigner to give the electorate the information it requires to make the most informed and intelligent possible decision. Declare where you stand and what you will do, so that the public can judge whether your stances and promised actions are what the times require.
Obama never did this, because he preferred for the campaign *not* to be about policy specifics, but rather to be about identity, personality, and the building of a movement. McCain would never be able to match him on those things. People supported Obama less because of specific policies and more because of personality qualities and the historic nature of electing an African-American president. Obama succeeded in defining the election in this way in large part because of the compliance of the media.
Perhaps you can understand why conservatives would find this frustrating. I often have this experience where I listen to a portion of Obama’s speech and I think, “Boy, that sure sounds nice…But what does it mean? What exactly is being promised here? He just spent five minutes speaking, but he actually said nothing. Nothing is being promised. And the crowd loves it.”
Warpublican sd:
“What a bunch of whining fools. Obama has promised to get us out of iraq”
You idiot, we are turning over Iraq as President Bush said because we didn’t listen to B. Hussein Obama. He was 100% wrong on his own stated reason why he should be President. His judgment on the Surge.
Barry said: “That genocide and Iranian control of Iraq were not adequate reasons for keeping American troops in Iraq”. He supported the worse of the defeat-o-crats who wanted immediate pull out of all troops regardless of the consequences to Iraq and those Iraqis who had sided with our troops. Of course, we know that stance was simply to get the supports of “anti-war” loons like you.
So nothing like have a President who bases national security decisions on political reasons.
Commentary: a tissue of lies.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/obamas_promises_to_gays.php
kudos to ahithophel…
We will see how long all his pronouncements of change – the order to close Gitmo, with the reality of doing it; the revocation of Clinton’s gays in the military policy, with the steps to actually change the procedures. – actually occur. He will say many things to many people, just as he did today, and will do very little when the reality is a political fiasco. Gays in the military has ramifications, and he had already said we have no answer about where to put the Gitmo inmates. Those issues will have to be resolved before anything actually happens after any of his announcements. The one which will happen right away is the re-establishment of the support for foreign abortions or whatever the Mexico City rule is all about. It has been that way before, he pays a chit to his abortion rights crowd and doesn’t get much flack from the Right, who expects him to this just as Clinton did. And if anyone here thinks Obama is using his defined Iraq withdrawal plan, please, that isn’t even close. We will have troops in Iraq after the next inauguration, whether it be Obama or his opponent.
Yes, soaring rhetoric is fun and the pundits love it (or hate it). But in the end it says nothing, just as this speech said nothing.
Warpub, you have brilliantly proved Abe’s argument. “We’ll get out of Iraq” is a declarative statement with some seriously broad left and right limits. In 16-months or 3 years, or a hundred? I imagine that Pres Obama will settle on the policy, declare previous statements inoperative, and you will hiss at the Commentary staff that it was OBVIOUS all along that this is what Pres Obama meant. That he or his advisors said different things were just examples of his great mind at worki.
That you’re unwilling/unable to clearly state what he plans to do is Abe’s point.
And I’d note that the military could always do what Pres Obama wanted them to do–administrative and logistical challenges notwithstanding. Or perhaps the DoD should be fighting the CinC in a sort of “7 Days in May” coup? It’s what happens when they excute his policies that we’re going to want to weigh in.
We’ll be out of Iraq in 2009,the Mullahs will be running Iraq in 2010. Iraq will have Nuclear weapons by 2015,3 years after Iran gets them.
Hmmmm.
What astonishes me is that anybody takes anything Obama says in a speech seriously.
Really. What credibility does Obama have vis a vis speeches and action?
And in this theme of speeches isn’t it readily apparent that every speech has a definite implied clause at the end that there will be a “until determined otherwise”? From the variability of Obama’s past positions there is a certain trait towards:
“for it until against it”
“against it until for it”
and even the interminable “for it until against it … then … against it until for it”
Some assembly required, in any configuration and any subject, as necessary for the speech du jour.
When they get specific in campaigns, they often end up doing a 180. Remember W’s “modest” foreign policy without “nation building”? Or Wilson’s “He Kept Us Out of War.” Or FDR’s balanced budget?
He’s going to have to govern soon. The election’s over. Let’s see what he does. You can’t bury all policy issues in platitudes and good feeling. Sharpen the knives now; bring them out when he screws up.
Well I could add the “all of Obama’s statements come with an expiration date, all of them.” But that seems a little too petty today.
Grumpy – that I think sums it up wonderfully.
JEM:
You’re right — Ed Morrissey is going to be declared the official wit of the opposition for that statement.
Unlike his predecessor, there’s no principle he won’t torture through pretzel logic and pandering. As Grumpy says, it will be interesting to see what happens.
He has a lot of nasty things in mind for us that we won’t like, so he has to be vague until he strikes. This is what we get for electing a mystery man. The next four years will be one ugly surprise after another and we will be unable to stop it. “Change” is what the dummies want, and “change” is what they’ll get, big time.
nonsense david and ahithophel
elections have always been like that. its not some new model. i think the bar is set low for conservative thought.
The speech was disappointing,far from memorable and almost banal.Not a auspicious beginning,although I’m certain MSNBC will spin it as the next Gettsburg Address.
If it didn’t quite qualify for Churchill’s criticism of Anthony Eden:
“As far as I can see you have used every cliche except “God is Love” and “Please adjust your dress before leaving.”
it did suffer from trying to hit every target, tug every heart-string, sound every resonant chord.
If it hooked you, you would have felt motivated, challenged and uplifted.
If it overdosed you, it would have felt like an exercise in rhetoric.
I’d have found something shorter, barer, easier to swallow as genuine, however fine or at least well-intentioned each point was, taken one at a time.
Ahithophel’s comment (#7) is right on. Obama’s campaign will now be the template for many other future candidates. And remember, part of Obama’s appeal is that he is fresh and new, which also helps one’s campaign because you have no decisions that can be torn apart. So this is what we will get – well spoken, fresh, book smart candidates who have rarely, if ever, made difficult decisions. That’s not good for our democracy.
My suspicion is that if the economy continues to suffer even after the Obama trillions are dished out, and/or there is a significant terrorist attack at home or abroad, all of Obama’s wonderful strengths (his grace, his intellect, his patience) will quickly be viewed as weaknesses.
It is nice to criticize and even mock what is happening, but for those of you old enough to remember we have not seen such a public display of hero worship since the Mid 1930″s in Germany. It is a fearful thing when people look upon a man as though he was a god. It is a terrible disaster when that man starts to think himself a god; expecting and demanding the same.
Quote:”It is a fearful thing when people look upon a man as though he was a god. It is a terrible disaster when that man starts to think himself a god; expecting and demanding the same.”
Yes, that’s what happened for around 6 years. The Republicans treated W like a demi-god and all criticism of him was reduced to “you say that because you hate Bush”. Therefore Bush policies were never really scrutinized and he was re-elected. A great blemish on our history.
Big Picture,
that is absurd. If you never heard the severe criticism of Bush from conservatives and Republicans – on spending, immigration, the war, several appointments and a host of other things – you are pretty damn uninformed.
That´s what happens when you get all your information from the MSM and the liberal blog bubble. They would never acknowledge criticism from a conservative point of view because that would force them to admit that Bush was a third way centrist on many issues.