Why It Sounds So Childish
- 06.17.2008 - 8:12 AMAt times Barack Obama seems to engage in a childlike model of international affairs: we should all sit down and chat and respect one another. If you have kids in grade school it will sound awfully familiar. Maybe the reason he sounds this way is because his advisors given him an infantile analysis of the world. Take a look at this from a likely Obama National Security Advisor Richard Danzig:
“Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security. He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans. . . .”
Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”
Read the whole thing. I assume, but fear, it is not a spoof. But really, one wonders if the “A” foreign policy team is ever going to arrive at camp Obama. It would seem he would be best served by several steps. First, stop making up facts. Get it right about the difference between the 1993 world trade center bombing trial and Nuremberg, the precedents for presidental summits, and what language they speak in Afghanistan. Second, get some decent briefings on developments in Iraq from our own military and independent experts, or just read the news. Third, come up with a forward-looking policy that is not based on historical errors or inaccurate facts and let Obama tout himself as the tough realist for the 21st century. And finally, get rid of advisors who make people wonder if he is really ready to sit at the grown-up’s table.
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