Tuesday, March 22, 2011

4 Thoughts on Operation Rhododaktylos Tomahawk Missiles

One.  Two.  Three ("too much too late?" hm).  Four (also proving that there's a Shakespeare reference for every situation or personality).  The Obama Administration's utter lack of a coherent foreign policy in general is the real liability (remember this?). So we muffed Egypt and are now lobbing missiles into Libya amid a muddled mess of stated and implied objectives.  Some of my lefty friends are attempting to spin Obama's dithering and indecisiveness as some kind of thoughtful, deliberate statecraft, but I am just not buying it.  From other lefties, including the same ones who fulminated loud and long about "Bush's wars," comes a thundering silence.  

As for what I think? Since we have troops committed and thus are in this thing, regardless of how we think we got here, we have to deal with the situation that now exists ... and I want to win.  Schadenfreude-tastic gloating is fun and in some cases justified, but that only lasts for a minute, and then we have to think about policy in a dangerous world.  OK, so the US can't and shouldn't be the policeman of the whole gorram galaxy, but when we do act on the world stage, I want a US that behaves like what it is -- the leader of the free world.  That's one reason I'm so frustrated with this administration's foreign policy vacuity and vacillations and vapid little speeches and apology tours.  It's not that America is too small and tainted for the risks and responsibilities of being the world's sole superpower.  It's that in many ways the current leadership is too small for America.  OK, end rant.

By the way, my antipathy for the stupid name Operation Odyssey Dawn continues unabated, especially after a conversation with the Cine-Sib last night ("'Odyssey Dawn' sounds like the name of a stripper" -- in the vein of the laughable name Jade Blue Afterglow).

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