I was going to write a full-blown post about this administration's foreign policy and public relations follies, but the thought occurs to me that everything I want to say can be summed up in the blog post title.
When Hillary Clinton insists that Benghazi residents took the late ambassador to the hospital as if performing a good deed instead of dragging his corpse in the street while snapping photos, when Susan Rice insists that the riots were spontaneous when the Libyan president says otherwise, when Jay Carney insists that the riots weren't about America but only one asinine video when even a cursory look at history would prove him wrong, when the president would rather go to Vegas and hang out with Beyonce and Jay-Z than go to security briefings and meet with Netanyahu, when the First Amendment seems to evaporate at a convenient moment, when the prospect of a nuclear Iran doesn't make you do anything other than pay lip service, and when Mitt Romney seems to be a bigger problem than the fact that abroad you have alienated your allies and inflamed your enemies while at home you have presided over 40+ months of 8% unemployment and $16 trillion national debt and unsustainable entitlements ... Well, you just might be living in utter defiance of reality. It's not just denial. It's the active, willful defiance of it.
(And, no, it's not raaaaaaaaaaaaacist to say so.)
7 comments:
The contradictions and seeds of failure can be found in Obama's speech on Libya from 2011:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-address-nation-libya
I'm the anti-Bush, lead from behind, only move in concert with coalition, don't take on risks and costs of shepherding regime change though we want Qaddafi out and we're taking down his regime, let the Libyans work out their future without our help ... BUT, we want a liberal Libya.
Bush understood the 3-way concert between autocrats, Islamists, and liberals, and that the liberals would need our help to succeed. Obama seems blind to the Islamists.
Obama says he shares Bush's liberal goals for the Middle East, but he rejects Bush's risks and leadership in support of those liberal goals (notwithstanding his Afghanistan 'Surge'). The problem is removing the risks also precludes the associated rewards.
* Bush understood the 3-way CONTEST between autocrats, Islamists, and liberals ...
Ah yes, I think I read "contest" the first time before the correction. But if "concert," then I would say it was more a Danse Macabre! ;-)
It is for the Arab Spring liberals.
Defining the problem frames the solution. To avoid an unwanted solution, ie, risky and costly intervention on behalf of the Arab Spring liberals and against the Islamists, Obama is being careful about defining the problem of the Stevens killing.
I think the Obama administration has made a coldly rational decision to set a line for intervention in the Arab Spring that they simply will not cross. I'm reminded heavily of the Clinton administration's "denial of reality" during the Rwandan genocide, where Clinton had drawn a line when he pulled out of Somalia that he refused to cross for Rwanda.
Characterizing as 'spontaneous' an Islamist campaign using a months-old obscure silly youtube clip avoids the point that the primary target of the Islamists is the Arab Spring liberals. The point is the all-important competition over who constructs the future of the Middle East. It's a power play to further marginalize an already vulnerable weaker target. Freedom of Speech is fundamental to the liberals. Defining the problem frames the solution: if anti-Islam is a consequence of the liberals' fundamental Freedom of Speech, then the solution is to disallow liberals from a constructive role in the future of the Middle East.
Obama's "denial of reality" is his rational concession of an illiberal Islamist future for the Middle East, just as Clinton once rationally conceded the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
I also think that this concession as it were is denying the other reality - the one of consequences both short- and long-term of said concession. The ultimate reality is that this will make the entire region a much more dangerous place for not only Middle East liberals but American and allied interests (not to mention Israel). Who knew that throwing the Iranian liberals under the bus back in 2009 was just the beginning? Anyway, the whole thing also smacks of a certain ... lack of clarity as to just who the US's friends and enemies are.
This is SO true, and it makes me want to SCREAM at people out here, who, I know, will be ecstatic about another Obama term. The thing is, Romney's a nut job on the other end of the spectrum. IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WHO REPRESENTS MEEEE???!!!!!
I’d love to see the media talk about the Susan Rice Rwanda-Libya link.
I've compared Ambassador Susan Rice’s reality-denying characterization of the Stevens killing to the Clinton administration’s determination to avoid labelling the Rwandan genocide as “genocide”, despite clear evidence it was genocide, in order to avoid US/UN intervention in Rwanda. It turns out I was actually comparing UN ambassador Susan Rice to NSC director Susan Rice.
Susan Rice was on President Clinton’s National Security Council as the Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995. See Rice’s instrumental role in avoiding the genocide label described in PBS’s authoritative account of the Rwandan genocide that is required viewing in many intro poli-sci IR and international law classes: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/desforges.html
Rice appears to be repeating the same strategy of defining the problem in Libya in the way needed to limit the US reaction to the Stevens killing and uphold Obama’s hands-off policy for post-Qaddafi Libya. Just as Clinton was willing to concede genocide in Rwanda, Obama appears willing to concede an Islamist Libya.
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