13 Responses to “No Apologies (II)”

1. ottovbvs, on April 24th, 2009 at 6:25 am Said:

   I read it Daniel. Intelligent and realistic as ever. And increasingly rare I’m afraid. We seem to have Gresham’s Law of journalism at work where poorly reasoned and blatantly political commentary drives out objective and insightful analysis. I’m old enough to remember Lippman and Alsop and these guys had strong points of view but always presented intelligent and intellectually coherent arguments even if you didn’t always agree with them. There are very few people around like this at the moment an no one with remotely the same stature. The juvenility of the right over the president’s conduct of himself and his representation of the US has reached comic proportions. Do they really think anyone other than the 30% base take this seriously, don’t they see the danger to their credibility of forever appearing like 9th graders. Currently we have a president sitting with appros in the low to mid sixties and disappros of 25-30% which coincidentally are about the same as Bush’s appros when he left office. His appros on foreign policy management were even higher. At the same time right direction/wrong direction is swinging positive for the first time for five years…five years! And these guys are ranting on about handshakes with Chavez. I’d really be interested in your take on why the Republicans and the right generally are persisting in what is basically self destructive behavior.

2. tz, on April 24th, 2009 at 7:06 am Said:

   Yes! Thank you for putting it in the proper perspective.

   Buchanan today might in some sense be right, but the problem is that we’ve been the belligerent bully for a long while. Pat says he wants non-interventionism. Well if interventionism is wrong, much less evil, then the criticisms of those who were hurt by our intervention are valid.

   And there is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing when most socialists have the floor. The only worse insult would be the laughter, if not falling asleep. As you said, to answer it gives it attention it does not deserve.

   But I fear the follow-through. We are still deindustrializing. (Overcapacity in autos? Do what Reagan did for Harley and watch the overcapacity shift across the oceans). I fear Buchanan might have a point that Obama did the right thing for the wrong reasons.

3. arbysauce, on April 24th, 2009 at 7:35 am Said:

   It wasn’t the handshake that earned him the ‘apologist’ criticism. The handshake is easier to justify. No, it was things like ‘can’t blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old.’ Utterly embarassing for the president of 300 million people to say such a thing. And I think it certainly belies your assertion that Obama is being accountable. ‘Accountable’ would be to meet accusations of the US fairly, not try to slide by them with that juvenile narcissistic comment. And, for me, I would like the president to side with the US even as he recognizes it has failings. As it is, Barack Obama is not showing much affinity or affection for the country he got elected to lead.

4. LMaggitti, on April 24th, 2009 at 7:43 am Said:

   Good article.

   I think it’s important for us non-interventionists to temper our (justifed) reminders that Obama is very much a supporter of the interventionist status quo with a recognition that he has been better in some respects than many non-interventionists feared. Though OTOH I suppose that the cynical read is that he is just a smart interventionist – rebuilding the international relationships that we need (in the long run) to continue to support our hegemony.

5. arbysauce, on April 24th, 2009 at 7:52 am Said:

   It will be useful to see the results of such a, um, unusual diplomatic strategy. However, his comment about not being blamed for things that happened when he was 3 months old was very embarrassing. Do you not agree? It doesn’t jive with your assertion that Obama is being accountable. It seems juvenile and narcissistic.

6. BarryD, on April 24th, 2009 at 8:07 am Said:

   Good column, Daniel.

7. Grumpy Old Man, on April 24th, 2009 at 8:22 am Said:

   Obama’s dismissive quip after Ortega’s rant was just the right tone.

   Far more effective than a point-by-point refutation or a rant.

   I still tend to think of Obama as a liberal interventionist, but he has his moments.

8. Daniel Larison, on April 24th, 2009 at 8:52 am Said:

   Thanks for all the comments. I agree, GOM, that Obama still has a vision of American “leadership,” as he would call it, that I cannot support, but I am willing to give him credit when he seems to be making the right moves. So far, the moves have been minimal, but almost entirely in the right direction, aside from my usual complaints about handling South Asia.

   For a long time, I subscribed to the “signs of weakness” school, if you can call it a school, until I realized that this is the mirror image of the error of attributing *all* bad political behavior around the world to something the U.S. has done. Just as it is true that, say, hard-core jihadis would still be hard-core jihadis regardless of what we do, it is also true that dictators are going to continue to repress people and consolidate power whether or not Americans make angry noises at them. Unless we mean to do something real on behalf of dissidents, I’m not sure what is accomplished by dwelling on their status. If we are going to do something real for them, that will not be harmed by maintaining formal proprieties with members of their government. Arguably, repression is more likely when Americans harp about the condition of domestic political opposition, because this associates the opposition with us and makes them targets for additional accusations of disloyalty.

   There seems to be an assumption that we radiate some kind of forcefield, either for good or ill, and that if the forcefield is pulled back it ensures that undesirable/good political actors will more or less automatically fill the vacuum. If there were any evidence that this was true, I would have more patience with the arguments based on it, but I just don’t see it.

   On a side note, I find it amusing that the Henningers of the world are complaining that Obama and American labor groups are somehow lacking in zeal for the cases of dissident labor leaders overseas when one of the main sticking points in the Colombian free trade agreement process is concern about the treatment of Colombian labor groups. In other words, labor activism on behalf of mistreated people abroad is good when it dovetails with the official enemies’ list, but doesn’t matter otherwise. The WSJ folks don’t want to hear about abuses against labor groups in Colombia, because Colombia is an ally and therefore their moralistic cant does not apply. Besides, they support the free trade agreement as originally offered, so any delay is unacceptable.

9. Daniel Larison, on April 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am Said:

   What people are taking as a narcissistic comment is what I think was part of the mockery he was leveling at Ortega. People seem inclined to take this as evidence that Obama thinks it’s all about him, when I think it equally plausible that he was belittling Ortega. Frankly, the thing I find more embarrassing about his statement re: the Bay of Pigs is that he didn’t know that it happened before he was born. This is where I might make a crack about the training in history IR majors have.

10. Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Choking On the Ashes of Her Enemy, on April 24th, 2009 at 9:35 am Said:

    [...] A perceptive piece by Daniel Larison (via his blog): [...]

11. Sean S., on April 24th, 2009 at 9:35 am Said:

    “There seems to be an assumption that we radiate some kind of forcefield, either for good or ill, and that if the forcefield is pulled back it ensures that undesirable/good political actors will more or less automatically fill the vacuum.”

    I think theres no doubt that a power vacuum would necessitate someone else attempting, if not successfully, to fill it. But, as you say, depending on a persons bent people want to presume who they like/dislike will be the one’s automatically to fill it.

    I think theres no doubt, as LM stated, that Obama is an interventionist. Just look at his foreign policy line up, most notably Susan Power. His statements highlighting the idea that America has done much good for the world, is a beacon, etc. etc. highlight that he believes in the American exception. He’s just far smarter, in both a tactical and a strategic way, than Bush (or even worse, McCain) ever was or could be.

12. ambignostic, on April 24th, 2009 at 9:45 am Said:

    Excellent column, up to your usual level of quality commentary. However, I think you need a new webcam.

13. WRW, on April 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am Said:

    Daniel’s column is on the mark. But with Pakistan in danger of falling to the Taleban, I think the proper response to this asinine nonsense is that there are far more important issues to consider (such as, when will the 82nd and the 10th Mountain Division be moving into Islamabad?)

    The “Right” (including Buchanan, for an unknown reason) are only showing their irrelevancy between this nonissue “appeasement” and making the defense of torture their defining foreign policy position. The “movement” is now led by a drug-addled talk show host and two unemployed, ill-educated, ex-Congressmen. Recipe for success.

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