The Emperor Has No Clothes

Repeating History

Obama seems to be doing very well at not learning from history, but repeating it.  Recently at St. Petersburg he said, “I wasn’t elected to get us into war, but to get us out.”  Famous last words eerily close to Woodrow Wilson’s re-election slogan, “he kept us out of war,” just before WW I, where chemical weapons were first used.

Then yesterday, grasping the Russian offer, he seemed to follow the notion of Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” in Munich just before WW II.  It was an odd speech, laying out all the arguments for timely military action (sounding amazingly like George Bush, whom he continues to blame & belittle), then kicking the can down the road (as he’s done w. the debt, Benghazi, IRS, etc.) at least several months to see if Putin’s scheme will work. 

Of course -- knowing that Congress wasn’t even close to giving him a go-ahead, to save political face he was anxious for any out.  Even an out that clearly is in the best interest of Russia, with the pre-condition of keeping their client state, Syria, alive and in their orbit, and giving them immunity from military action.  I thought Obama had said that Assad must go (ah, yes, and what of Hillary’s statement that he was a reformer)?  But now the objective of any strike was not regime change.  And Russia, who themselves are in violation of biological & chemical weapons treaties, are to be trusted to monitor/enforce Syria’s???  It’s disgraceful that Obama even seriously considers it, and shows how foolish and lacking in leadership he is.

Not only the experts have weighed in on the impracticality/impossibility of the deal, but anyone with any brains can readily see it.  With apparently many hundreds (thousands?) of tons of materials dispersed at some 50 sites, in the midst of a civil war, monitors will either sit on and secure or ship out of Syria all that material?  Destroying it would be a technically difficult task under normal conditions, let alone in this civil war, when UN inspectors were being shot at recently while investigating the gassing incident.  And if/when the locations are made public, no doubt Al Qaida would love to get their hands on some of it.

Putin has been completely uncooperative in every way with this president and US interests, and now he’s suddenly looking out for our best interests?  No, he’s playing this president for a fool, and taking advantage of his political weakness, in good KGB fashion.  As will other bad guys (Iran, N. Korea, etc.) now that our credibility with “red lines” is a joke.  The wolves sense weakness, and may well begin to act as a pack to take advantage of our war-weariness and his lack of strong leadership.  Then we truly would be overwhelmed – if we can’t even muster the will to fight in one place, certainly we couldn’t in multiple. 

And now Putin in a NYT op-ed excoriated Obama’s “exceptional” remark.  Obama had stepped out of his normal mode and begun to sound conservative- or Bush-like, touting America’s “exceptionalism” to drum up support for military action.  But Putin put him back in his place – with unbelievable chutzpah.  As if Putin and the former & neo-Communists haven’t acted out of a sense of exceptionalism/nationalism/self-interest (Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Japan, Iran, Syria, Cuba, .....). 

Several have noted how right Romney was in the campaign to point out Russia being a concern.  But of course Obama & the Left scoffed his “Cold-War, naïve” mentality.  Who’s scoffing now?  Can we hear Putin & Assad laughing, having put one over on Obama?  Truly we look foolish & impotent.  We have pitted a community organizer against a KGB general.

Oh, yes, we showed how unbigoted we are.  And look how much respect and love that got us in the world.  Many prominent & other progressives are bailing on Obama right and left – finally awakening from their dream world, having seen the emperor with no clothes.  They simply can no longer deny the glaring cognitive dissonance.

More on MLK’s Dream

Ed Asner explained that many in Hollywood [on the Left] don’t speak out against Obama’s push for military action against Syria because they don’t want to appear anti-Black.  This is very revealing of the progressive mindset.  It shows that they do indeed assume conservative critiques of Obama are racially motivated.  But by that logic, doesn’t the fact that libs even only disagree (without expressing it) make them closet racists?  Certainly at least in the sense of the soft bigotry of low expectations – that they don’t feel that a Black president, or the Black Democrat constituency, aren’t smart or strong enough to take criticism without associating it with racism?

As a postscript to my last post, I would point out that part of the Black community that has diverged from MLK’s dream is the gang culture (the dress, the look, the talk, the violent and degrading rap,...). It permeates not only much of Black culture, but has spread well beyond.  It is emulated and its praises sung.   It’s cool.  And it gets “respect” out of fear, often.  Who is to say that the vast majority of people outside that mindset are not judging them by their character rather than their color, as MLK dreamed?  And that they don’t judge that mindset equally, whether in the Black or White community?  There is a difference between demanding and earning or being worthy of respect, just like the difference between demanding and earning benefits.