fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

There He Goes Again

When I said that as President I would lead direct diplomacy with our adversaries, I was called naïve and irresponsible. But how are we going to turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to our adversaries if we don’t have a President who will lead that diplomacy? ~Barack Obama By electing […]

When I said that as President I would lead direct diplomacy with our adversaries, I was called naïve and irresponsible. But how are we going to turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to our adversaries if we don’t have a President who will lead that diplomacy? ~Barack Obama

By electing someone other than Obama, someone who might know how to frame and present the issue well?  Framed this way, it appears to be part of a reflexive endorsement of whatever it is that Bush didn’t do.   

He continued:

When I said that we should take out high-level terrorists like Osama bin Laden if we have actionable intelligence about their whereabouts, I was lectured by legions of Iraq War supporters. 

And by many Iraq war opponents, too, who thought the idea as stated was batty.  Because it was batty–and dangerous.  Pakistan policy requires special finesse because of the internal political problems of the state, and instead of a scalpel Obama brought a sledgehammer to the problem.  That was his idea of introducing a new approach to foreign policy? 

Obama:

They said we can’t take out bin Laden if the country he’s hiding in won’t. A few weeks later, the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton – agreed with my position.

It is conceivable that Tom Kean and Lee Hamiton–old establishment hands and kings of conventional wisdom that they are–are just as wrong as Obama.  Shocking, I know.  They were on a blue-ribbon investigative commission; they are not necessarily trained Pakistan experts (indeed, I feel confident in saying that they are not) and are endorsing a general principle that would, in this particular case, be potentially very counterproductive, if not disastrous.  Context is everything in these matters.  Ignoring context is part of the reason why the Bush Doctrine has been such a flop–it attempted to apply a universal standard to a kind of problem that needs to handled differently on a case-by-case basis.     

Putting it the way that he did, Obama makes it sound as if the unwilling government is actively aiding and abetting Bin Laden, when this isn’t obviously the case.  The government may be unwilling to have American military strikes inside their territory for entirely different reasons.  Declaring your intention to ignore an allied government about military actions inside their country doesn’t sound as if you are “turning the page” of the Bush-Cheney era, but rather sounds more like an extension of the same ham-fisted approach to international relations: we rule, you obey; your sovereignty means nothing if we say it means nothing.     

Also, if the “foreign policy elite” failed us, as Obama says, why does he have so many members of the “foreign policy elite” that got it wrong advising him?

Obama:

And when I said that we can rule out the use of nuclear weapons to take out a terrorist training camp, it was immediately branded a “gaffe” because I did not recite the conventional Washington-speak. But is there any military planner in the world who believes that we need to drop a nuclear bomb on a terrorist training camp?

Almost certainly not, but that is to miss the entire point.  There is no “conventional Washington-speak” on this question, because you don’t talk about it in public!  If no one with any expertise believes that we should do it, and no one has proposed doing it, why even talk about it?  When it comes to nuclear weapons, you don’t talk about when you would use them–the uncertainty actually can add to their deterrent effect.  Ruling out such things, even though we might all agree that doing them is fantastically stupid, is the equivalent of MacArthur and Acheson describing the U.S. defense perimeter and excluding Korea from it, implying that everything outside the perimeter was up for grabs.  Result?  The Korean War.  But the officials of the Truman Administration was “straight” with the people, all right, and that’s what matters! 

Is it just me, or does Obama’s latest speech come off sounding rather too narcissistic?  Granted, I am not an Obama fan, so I tend to respond as negatively to his speeches as other people respond positively, but he spends the first half of the speech talking about how insightful and prescient he was and then launches into how the mean establishmentarians have been picking on him for his allegedly bold, new ideas.  It isn’t until the second half of the speech that he gets down to any of his really substantive proposals, including some that are actually sensible (his work with Lugar on securing nuclear materials is to his credit and ought to have had a much larger role in this speech).  His idea about making the DNI a position with a fixed term and semi-independence has some merit.  However, his talk about “strengthening” the NPT seems like rather wishful thinking to me.  Does Obama intend to scupper the nuclear deal made with the Indians, since that deal pretty blatantly violates the NPT? 

We don’t know the answer to that, because he immediately goes back to talking about Obama’s wonderful experiences in life.  I do realise that personality and personal history are relevant and are important factors for many voters, but this speech seems to be far too much about the man and far too little about what he will do.  Some of the things he does tell he will do will invite yawns if they do not invite derision.  For instance, this seems odd:

I’ll give an annual “State of the World” address to the American people in which I lay out our national security policy.

How better to underscore one’s interventionism than to make what will be perceived as a claim that the President rules the world?  Why not include this as part of the State of the Union, or incorporate it into the standard speech at the U.N.? 

And perhaps I am not appreciating the cleverness in this proposal:

I’ll draw on the legacy of one our greatest Presidents – Franklin Roosevelt – and give regular “fireside webcasts,” and I’ll have members of my national security team do the same.

I’m sure most political bloggers will find this proposal interesting, since it will give them new online material on a regular basis, but what’s the point?  In an Obama Administration (something that will, of course, never come to pass, but just for fun let’s imagine), do we really want the National Security Advisor doing webcasts, or do we want him to do his job well?  Viewed skeptically, this proposal seems to be an attempt to make national security officials into part of a P.R. effort, when we have already had quite enough of this sort of fluff from the current batch.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here