The Tundra Tabloids’ readers know by now the TT’s opinion on yesterday’s speech by Obama on the Middle East. The way its worded, all sides are going to interpret something different in the speech, which means to me that it was very intentional which speaks greatly of a political jostling for his reelection in 2012.
That said, there other things to notice from the speech worth mentioning, the TT’s friend, Joshua Pundit, while holding to the same line as the TT concerning Obama’s main intention of the speech, reelection posturing, delivers the following salient point:
“What the festivities were about was more jirzyah for the Arabs and laying the ground for legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood.”
He’s right of course, the man is following the only path available to an ideologue that’s completely unable and/or unwilling to evolve in his political thinking and views in light of the facts. His natural response could only be to throw money at the Arabs to try and woo the fundamustards that will most certainly be soon taking over the reigns of government in the region.
Also worth noting is the abject novice approach he takes in his speech (hasn’t learned a thing since the Cairo address) towards building a brighter future in the M.E. region. Talk about ‘pie in the sky’ type thinking, this one takes the cake. Retired US Naval intelligence officer, J.E.Dyer writing over at Hot Air delivers a stinging rebuke of Obama’s lack of statesmanship. Read on. KGS
Obama and the Middle East: Taking sides
POSTED AT 6:44 PM ON MAY 19, 2011 BY J.E. DYER
In a speech that was 99% filler, President Obama lobbed a few grenades.
Ideology
One was this statement, under the heading of how US power is to be used in the Middle East:
“After decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.”
This is radical ideological terminology at its most basic. It is unaccountable, aspirational talk, the kind you can’t get away from in the college classroom – and the kind statesmen avoid for a reason. There is no way to audit outcomes with this kind of formulation. It’s an ecstatic expression, not a statement of actionable policy.
But it does imply that “pursuing the world as it should be” is a basis for national policy. There is a reason why that has never been the basis for US policy: because of what it implies about mechanisms and processes. The American tradition does not involve posting a guard over the world, with an attendant bureaucracy, to “pursue what the world should be.” We are a friend to genuinely liberalizing popular movements, but the focus of our efforts is liberal, quiescent conditions, not prescribed outcomes.
It is up to other peoples to pursue the world as they think it should be, if they have some corporate idea of that. We may or may not be there to stand with their idea – it depends on what it is, and what the situation is. As long as we continue to respect borders and national sovereignty, there will be important limits on what the US can or will do to intervene between the local authorities and the local street vendors.
So Obama has set himself a conundrum: how much to breach the sovereignty of others, versus how much to ignore and abandon his own rhetoric. We can only hope he tends more toward the latter. That course will damage the reputation and influence of the United States, but at least it won’t make us a direct instigator of instability and chaos.
