Obama and Reality

[bonnie]

Obama and Reality

By Miguel A. Guanipa

The rather peculiar manner in which our current president reacts to what at face value is perceived as an imminent crisis versus the contrived serenity (some would call it aloofness) with which he confronts what by all accounts can be classified as bona fide disasters raises some important questions about the true character of the man we still know so little about. This is even truer when when in hindsight, many of these so-called crises can be fairly characterized as no more than the overstated prognosis of hurdles that never materialized, while the alluded-to disasters are real, irrevocable tragedies that could have been prevented in the first place.

Consider, for example, the severity of President Obama's rebuke to his detractors at the genesis of his administration, when he cautioned that the world's financial markets would collapse unless everyone indiscriminately supported his drastic measures to address the looming economic downturn. He wielded a similar iron fist in Copenhagen, in tandem with other anxious world leaders, and berated a complacent world for not sharing his sense of urgency to avert the coming global climate Armageddon. Both deliveries were served promptly, vigorously, and with a potent supply of moral exigency. Yet it is fair to say that as far as real scientific consensus is concerned, one of these dire predictions is simply not in the cards for at least another couple of centuries (if at all), while the other is a posthumous economic catastrophe that we were presumably spared from in lieu of virulent remedies which are now posing a greater hardship than the anticipated woes.

Now examine by contrast the president's initial reaction to the news of a dedicated Nigerian terrorist boarding an airliner with a homemade bomb snugly tucked in his underwear. Airport security scanners have yet to encounter a more impenetrable fortress -- but I digress. Shortly after a somewhat disjointed, impromptu spiel (presumably intended to reassure the country that he had been duly made aware of the potentially catastrophic incident), the president was all too eager to resume his snorkeling sessions -- evidently the next vacation activity scheduled after the few rounds of golf that preceded the rather inopportune press conference. He was on vacation, after all.

The president made an even less valiant effort to veil his appalling indifference on the heels of a tragedy that has too quickly faded from the popular consciousness. The latter transpired in Fort Hood, Texas, when a disgruntled jihadist executed fourteen innocent people in cold blood (the unborn baby of a pregnant victim included). In what called for a more solemn disposition in deference to the relatives of the victims of this atrocious attack, the first few minutes of the president's expiatory (but no less phlegmatic) address included some precursory remarks about a Native American relations event he had just attended and a jovial "shout-out" to one of his acquaintances present in the audience. If Obama wanted to convey that terrorism is the least of his concerns in his agenda, he did a superb job at that particular conference.

But from a more charitable point of view, one may surmise that our young president is striving to remain cool, calm, and collected in the wake of what he recognizes are panic-engendering tragedies. At the same time, he wants to appear genuinely concerned about the unavailability of reliable health care and the negative repercussions of a protracted economic slump for millions of the already less fortunate. But this does not satisfactorily explain his initially tepid response to concerns that rank very high on the scale of fears that most Americans live with -- and the ferocious urgency with which he undertakes his own pet issues, one of which is steadily losing support from even some in his own camp.

A more sober assessment would accurately characterize Obama's first response as the intuitive reaction of a reckless, aloof, and shockingly indifferent commander in chief -- one who is disproportionately concerned about things unlikely to happen and supremely disinterested in tragic events that are bound to be repeated if we do not take the necessary precautions. This posture has been labeled as a pre-9/11 mindset.

What is at play here is that Obama is a man for whom all other issues are marginal when compared to his own agenda. Thus he has not yet learned how to respond to crises other than the ones theatrically crafted by him and his minions as vehicles to accomplish this agenda. When it comes to a real crisis like a domestic terror attack, Obama is a man in a perennial holding pattern, waiting for his media-savvy advisers to prod him to address things inimical to the progressive milieu he inhabits. Such crises are to him as background noise, but they unexpectedly register as grave concerns to the populace. And so he displays a curious detachment from reality. He stumbles, as many people feared long ago, upon that which he is ill-prepared to address with the gravitas befitting a president. Yet as unconventional as his responses are, it is a safe bet that President Obama has finally gone past the point of being immune to the stagnating element of predictability.

The great leader has emerged, and he has been found wanting. Except perhaps for the barely-sentient Obama groupie, sooner or later everyone will come to realize that it takes more than just proper diction to be an effective leader. Sure, eloquence may fool some at first. But eventually, the real man behind the words must surface, and what a colossal disappointment -- especially for those who had vested such vain hopes in him -- has Mr. Obama turned out to be in so many respects. How paltry and useless his renowned oratory skills have proven in sparing him from this cruel destiny. The premier lament is, of course, that this decisive epiphany did not dawn upon the faithful prior to his coronation.

[abelisle]

Threats by Steve Coll from "The New Yorker" 1/18/10

An underwear bomber who attempts mass murder on Christmas Day is bound to leave many people upset and a few unhinged. The days since the events aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 have felt like an induced flashback to that dislocating season when the country lost its innocence about the dot-connecting skills of its government. In particular, the tragicomic announcements and rescinding of announcements by the Transportation Security Administration—concerning, for example, when airline passengers might be permitted to read books while in flight—raised the possibility that, more than eight years after September 11th, the United States, like some synthetic organism immune to the laws of evolution, had failed to adapt to the challenges of Al Qaeda.

Compounding this impression, at least on the cable news channels, has been the resurrection—as predictable as the penultimate scene in a slasher movie—of the Cheney World View. Its principal proponent took time off from composing his memoir to issue a statement to Politico that was so lacking in dignity and restraint that it hinted at the presence of a sinister franking machine. On President Obama:

He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. . . . But we are at war.

Apart from its construction on a false premise (“Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” Obama declared last May; “We are at war,” he said again last week), the statement, and the attention it received, suggested that American discourse on counterterrorism policy remains frozen in 2002. Fortunately, there is abundant evidence that the United States is entering a new era in its struggle against terrorists, one in which government and society are proving to be self-correcting, while Al Qaeda, like Dick Cheney, is proving to be self-isolating.

Flight 253 did expose appalling gaps in America’s terrorism defenses. Some of the “systemic” failures described in documents and statements released last week by the White House, such as the intelligence bureaucracy’s recurrent dot dyslexia, were difficult to evaluate, given the scant detail; they may have been as inevitable as human imperfection. But other breakdowns inventoried defy understanding after so many years and so many dollars: inadequate watch-listing procedures; too few air marshals; and the failure by analysts to properly search databases for biographical insight into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspected bomber, after he had been reported by his father.

The attempted Christmas attack also put Al Qaeda’s resourcefulness on full display. In its third decade, under severe pressure, it has evolved into a jihadi version of an Internet-enabled direct-marketing corporation structured like Mary Kay, but with martyrdom in place of pink Cadillacs. Al Qaeda shifts shapes and seizes opportunities, characteristics that argue for its longevity. It will be able to wreak havoc periodically for as long as it can recruit suicide bombers and well-educated talent, as it has done consistently.

Yet Al Qaeda is also weakening. Osama bin Laden sought to lead the vanguard of a spreading revolution. Instead, he and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are hunkered down, presumably along the Afghan-Pakistani border, surrounded by only about two hundred hard-core followers. Their adherents in Yemen and Africa number no more than a few thousand. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a tiny fragment of its former self. Bin Laden’s relations with the Taliban seem brittle. Unlike Hezbollah, Al Qaeda provides no social services and thus has built no political movement. Unlike Hamas, its bloody nihilism has attracted no states that are willing to defend its legitimacy. In a world of at least one and a half billion Muslims, this does not a revolution, or even a vanguard, make.

Many of bin Laden’s declared goals, such as the removal of American soldiers from Muslim lands, still resonate in Islamic societies. Yet, in polls conducted across the Muslim world, large majorities repudiate Al Qaeda, and particularly its tactic of murdering civilians. It is common to observe that bin Laden’s poll ratings have collapsed in recent years because his violence has taken the lives of Muslims as well as infidels. Actually, polling shows that citizens of Islamic countries, as elsewhere, overwhelmingly disapprove of any indiscriminate killing, whatever the victims’ religious beliefs, and no matter the cause.

Since September 11th, American public opinion about how to respond to bin Laden’s threats has also evolved. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, the electorate chose nominees in both major parties who opposed torture. Exit polls indicated that one of the reasons voters elected Barack Obama was to improve America’s image abroad.

In office, Obama has begun to reframe counterterrorism strategy. He has crafted a posture of strategic patience, premised upon a forward defense and the durability of American constitutional values. When the White House reorganized the staffs of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council last year, it created a new “resilience policy” directorate. In May, in a speech on terrorism delivered at the National Archives, Obama remarked:

From Europe to the Pacific, we’ve been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology.

The United States is hardly the first democracy to have its nerves jangled and its values challenged by persistent terrorism. The lessons from Britain, India, Israel, Turkey, and elsewhere imply that democracies require time as well as trial and error to find a sustainable balance of politics and policy (as was true of the United States, with respect to Communism, during the Cold War). The examples from abroad suggest that, while the cost of learning about terrorism in a democracy can be very high, it leads in time to strategic postures, backed by public opinion, that are based on national principles similar to those which Obama outlined in May. After the devastating attacks in Mumbai just fourteen months ago, for example, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, ignored jingoistic cries for military strikes against Pakistan. In response, Indian voters last spring returned him to office and gave his party its best showing in nearly two decades.

Wrestling over how to close Guantánamo and the use of full-body scanners, the American public will once again reconsider the balance of its own counterterrorism policies; so will Obama. Last week, he said that the breakdowns that almost claimed the lives of Flight 253’s passengers were “my responsibility.” He was right; such is his office. Yet the President has neither overestimated nor underestimated terrorism. His record shows that he studies and adapts. May his curriculum always consist of near-misses. ♦

Thought there ought to be a pro-Obama quote. Gather that you're a Republican?

Alex

[bonnie]

Quote:

Thought there ought to be a pro-Obama quote. Gather that you're a Republican?Alex

More conservative than republican with a little libertarian.

One thing I am not is a socialist.

When dignity and restraint is discussed Obama could take a page or two for his personal use.

HIs forever blaming Bush for everything is tiresome at the least.

He is not a man that has taken responsibility for much of anything. Hopefully those chickens come home to roost in his coop.

If the republicans quit acting like democrat wanna be's they may just be able to do something productive