Posted on 08/30/2010 12:58:28 PM PDT by mojito
It is not that we didn’t know this before, but reading the New York Times – surely designed to be as favorable toward Obama as the reporter could possibly manage — one is left slack-jawed. Obama doesn’t like being commander in chief, isn’t good at it, and has relied on one tutor, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is leaving next year. The report should be read in full. But a few low-lights:
"A year and a half into his presidency, Mr. Obama appears to be a reluctant warrior. Even as he draws down troops in Iraq, he has been abundantly willing to use force to advance national interests, tripling forces in Afghanistan, authorizing secret operations in Yemen and Somalia, and escalating drone strikes in Pakistan. But advisers said he did not see himself as a war president in the way his predecessor did. His speech on Tuesday is notable because he talks in public about the wars only sporadically, determined not to let them define his presidency."
"A former adviser to the president, who like others insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the situation candidly, said that Mr. Obama’s relationship with the military was ‘troubled’ and that he ‘doesn’t have a handle on it.’"
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
So he’s a very bad CinC.
But he makes up for it in that he is great at taking vacations.
bflr
Obama has already done the damage he intended to do.
Now he’ll blame Republicans for the next two years after Republicans take over Congress.
Then he’ll do the lecture tour cash in, book deals, and ‘green’ company shakedowns. He’s set for life already. Pick up the extra retirement ex-Presidents get and move on.
He really doesn’t care what damage he does to his party or this nation.
Read the Hitler psycho-biographies (and psycho is right) and you’ll see the narcissist personality at work.
Hopefully for us all Obama okay to play golf into the sunset.
Gee, I’m surprised.
He’s only good at one thing: Spending our money on stuff that doesn’t work.
Mac daddy is very bad at all things except planning parties, vacation and golf rounds.
Totally worthless and worst POTUS EVER.
He makes me sick. It must make a marine/soldier/airman/sailer wretch every time they have to look at a picture of that ...thing.
Just imaging taking an order from the Dung-Beetle-in-Chief.
Blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......
LOL. I remember reading that he was in a roomful of military brass and was VERY uncomfortable. He has no clue how to relate.
That's what happens when you are brought up surrounded by philosophies which teach that the US military is the worst of evils. Like Hillary, I believe he DESPISES military people.
He wants a dictator title..
I miss Carter.
I wonder if the Left knows he will throw all of them under the bus.
He can always step down. If he did not want to be a "war president," he should not have run while the USA is knee-deep in two of them.
Not only must they wretch; but, they must have some sort of realization that this cretin is putting them in grave danger with that sort of “presence.” I empathize with them greatly.
As if GWB ever saw himself as a “war president”. He thought he was going to working on HSAs and privatization of SS. Who knows what might’ve happened in those two areas if 9/11 hadn’t happened?
I would imagine to be a good Commander in Chief you have to love your country and hate your enemies...
neither of which perspective does he possess.
“Mac daddy is very bad at all things except planning parties, vacation and golf rounds.”
I don’t think he’s good at planning, or doing, anything. Oh yeah, and he really sucks at golf and riding his little girl bicycle!
it’s tough to be the CinC of US troops when the only enemy you you hate viscerally is the US and its citizens who embrace “traditional values” which to obama is codespeak for “white Christian rich/middle class advantaged folk”
“As if GWB ever saw himself as a ‘war president’. He thought he was going to working on HSAs and privatization of SS.”
How Bush viewed himself in 2000 is irrelevant to the current discussion. Once terror hit, he certainly changed his view. Bush all too deliberately focused on war.
The thing about Obama is—though he’s barely, if at all, deviated from Bush’s war policies—he sees himself exactly as he pretended to be during the campaign. That is, the anti-Bush, vaguely pacifistic and representative of a New Way. He’d like to change everything relating to American world strategy in one sweep, if he could. But as reality is complicated (and he never had any practice running anything anyway), Obama’s changed almost nothing. Which can be hand-waved by constant reference to the burdens of what you’d imagine were centuries of misrule under Bush if you didn’t know better.
it’s tough to be the CinC of US troops when the only enemy you hate viscerally is the US and its citizens who embrace “traditional values” which to obama is codespeak for “white Christian rich/middle class advantaged folk”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.