David Ignatius concedes that Obama is conducting a do-over on Afghanistan. (“What’s odd about the administration’s review of Afghanistan policy is that it is revisiting issues that were analyzed in great detail — and seemingly resolved — in the president’s March 27 announcement of a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”) But what is most horrifying is the description of the process — academic, indecisive, and seemingly designed to get to the lowest common denominator:
As Obama’s advisers describe the decision-making process, it sounds a bit like a seminar. National security adviser Jim Jones gathers all the key people so that everyone gets a voice. A top official explains: “We don’t get marching orders from the president. He wants a debate. . . . We take the competing views and collapse them toward the middle.” This approach produced a consensus on Iran and missile defense, and as National Security Councils go, Obama’s seems to work pretty smoothly.
Yikes. Works smoothly? Well, if the point is to reach some blissful, mushy middle ground on virtually everything without regard to the real-world consequences of the actions, then it’s like silk. But is the presidency a graduate course on international relations? This one appears to be — filled with platitudes and catch-phrases one would hear in the Ivy League (“interdependence” is right up there), disdain for military force (“Never solves anything!” — er, except slavery and Nazism), and the fetish for “consensus.” It’s all very smooth and polite and the results are very well disastrous.
A half-measure in Afghanistan, the quagmire of “engagement” with Iran, and jerking missile defense out of Europe may engender “consensus” among essentially like-minded advisers, but all will leave the U.S. more vulnerable and the world more dangerous. Makes you miss the Decider.
they don’t know much about economics but europeans are definately better on foreign policy than americans
Spoken like the citizenry of a true second-rank power. Opinion, without responsibility.
Don’t get me wrong. J’aime bien la France. I think P.J. O’Rourke said it best. “The French are the masters of the ‘dog ate my homework’ school of international relations.”
more like they learned their lesson from algeria and wisely stayed out of vietnam 2.0
“The poll, made available to _The Jerusalem Post_ on Thursday, was conducted for The Israel Project by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a major polling and strategy firm, during the first two weeks of April. It surveyed 853 adults throughout France and 451 opinion makers, and has a margin of error of 3.36%.”
Don’t you kind of wonder, Mr. Bones, how the militant extremist neocomrades would respond to a poll conducted for “The Obama Project” by “Carville Axelrod Rahm Associates” that mixed in twenty-nine percent of “opinion makers”?
France is a top-heavy élitist society, so G and Q and R *may* be behavin’ reasonably here — but that is not a proposition to be bet on in the absence of fuller disclosure.
Happy days.
Le sionisme, c’est le vol.
The rest is Commentary.
Lester,
the lesson of Algeria was that the French should have completely crushed their enemies within Algeria.
Most of the “nationalist” movements of those days that “succeeded” led the nations they took over right over a cliff.
Just about all of Africa speaks to the perils of people gaining independence who haven’t a clue what to do with it.
6 yes colonialism just wasn’t brutal enuogh. that was / is it’s problem
#5: Va te faire enculer, espece de vieux con.
#8
heh
Its just the staple word of NPR, “nuanced”
def. 1 – sophisticated moral relativism.
def. 2 – rationalizing the desire to go to a cafe and ignore the world, than think about complicated issues and take a meaningful stand on principle.
#9
The one and only reasonable reply to Demented Old Fool’s postings.
There’s a difference between “incoherent” and “nuanced.”
“twice as many French support the Palestinian side of the conflict rather than the Israeli side (27% versus 14%)”
It might be well to consider who actually was surveyed in these poles. Not that France has ever been a real friend to the Jews, the anti-Israel Muslim population might be so large that a pro-Israel response is all but impossible.
#13
How many jews were serving in, said, the UK or the US or the Germanic Imperial Armies, as officers in the edge of the 20th Century? ( CF L’affaire Dreyfuss)
They are French jews and they are French, period.