| | | Inode, I'm going to go on a long rant here.
I believe this is a defining moment for Obama's foreign policy, namely his admission that he doesn't have a strategy to deal with ISIL.
This isn't just a gaffe, IMO. This is proof that Obama wishes the whole issue would just go away. And I don't say that just because I'm one of those "wingers" that Ted hates so much. I say that because it is absolutely astonishing to me that Obama would ever say that out loud.
(By the way, remember when the media was all riled up over George W. Bush saying that you can't win the war on terrorism? This is worse. Much worse.)
Of course, there are many ways to spin that statement. CJ of course is bringing up the usual "Republicans are warmongers" distraction. Ted is pretending that Obama actually has a strategy so brilliant, he can't reveal it or explain it to us laypeople. Some other people are wondering why we should even get involved with ISIL in the first place. They are calling for us to GTFO of the Middle East, the sooner the better.
It's that last point that I want to address in the context of Obama's gaffe. The isolationist doctrine has been brought up before, of course, especially since Obama came into office promising to pull us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And to be sure, having a "hands-off" policy is indeed a strategy. If ISIL only represents a threat to Iraq and its neighbors, then yeah, we shouldn't bother interfering.
The problem is that Obama is not an isolationist. It actually takes more backbone and resolve to "do nothing" than to give into the pressure of "doing something." When we see images and videos of Western journalists getting beheaded, the first gut reaction (after the initial horror) is to wonder what can be done to stop such brutality.
Same thing happened when we saw the reports of chemical weapons being used in Syria. That was a crime against humanity that the world could not just stand by and watch. That was why Obama rattled the saber and start sounding like a "warmonger" against the Syrian president. (Of course, Obama then backed down and pretended that Congress mattered in his decision to go to war. Only the very ignorant couldn't see right through that.)
Hence it takes some real guts for Obama to come out and say, "These videos are horrifying, but we will not get involved in any further Middle Eastern conflicts. We have already sacrificed too many lives and too much money trying to fix the previous problems, and the Middle East is no better off today than it was before we went into Iraq. Besides, we have first world problems to deal with, such as the color of my suit, or whether the name 'Redskins' is offensive or not." (OK, maybe that last sentence is stretching things just a little.)
The TLDR version, of course, is that "doing nothing" is a strategy, yet even the Obama administration can't decide on it. And now that the international media is being sacrificed like sheep to the slaughter, they will no longer tolerate Obama's indecision on the urgent issue. But unfortunately for them, they might have no other choice but to get used to it.
Or they could simply pray for a miracle.
Tenchusatsu |
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