Posted on 03/18/2014 1:48:40 AM PDT by markomalley
Edited on 03/18/2014 7:13:18 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Obama will never admit that he or his policies have been wrong. He is incapable of that sort of reflection
Weird.
VDH usually makes me reach for history book or dictionary and I enjoy his acerbic observations.
Still, like some of my favorite foods, he never gets old and I enjoy the taste..
Then again, maybe the punchline comes in the next article...
People warning about mistakes being made by Obama fundamentally misunderstand him and his sort. Obama, will not learn from his mistakes because he doesn’t believe that he has made any.
He has from the beginning.
Obama suffers from the same delusions as Carter that you can make nice with dictators, despots and terrorist if you will only understand their grievances.
Obama and Carter also agreed on the principle that any ally of the US is evil and any enemy of the US is a potential friend if we will only agree to their demands (and bow before them and kiss their ring).
Obama and Carter both think that US economic and military supremacy has been the ultimate evil in the world. They could not be more wrong.
PAGE 2!
“...Secretary of State John Kerry believes the chief challenge to the world is global warming, although the planet’s temperature has remained unchanged for nearly two decades, even as carbon emissions have soared. The Great Lakes are frozen over as the president claims global warming is “settled science.”
The Middle East is a mess. The United States’ heroic effort to stabilize Iraq was thrown away when Obama yanked out all U.S. troops after the success of the surge. Afghanistan, where more U.S. soldiers have died in Obama’s five years than in Bush’s seven, is on the path of Vietnam in early 1975.
Iran will get the bomb. All the efforts to achieve an effective boycott have been abandoned willy-nilly without any Iranian concessions.
Red lines in Syria only empowered Assad and Putin. The corpses pile up, and the idea of the Russians and Syrians accounting for WMD is a cruel joke.
Libya is Somalia on the Mediterranean, a failed state that looks across to Europe. So does Egypt, where we at one time or another have backed and then withdrawn support from three successive regimes — and tuned out the once lavishly praised Arab Spring.
Relations with Israel are at an all-time low. Our special relationship with Turkey only green-lighted Recep Erdogan’s efforts to undermine democracy and Islamicize his country.
Our efforts to reduce our strategic arsenal in association with Vladimir Putin, together with our new Hamlet-like stance towards China, have terrified our Pacific allies. In the next three years, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (and perhaps the Philippines and Australia as well) will either make concessions to China or threaten to go nuclear — if their suspicions continue to grow that they are no longer under the U.S. strategic umbrella.
So: Will Obama’s advisers Carterize the president — that is, persuade him to step back, as Carter did in 1980? Probably not — and for a variety of both practical and ideological reasons.
1. Carter wanted to get reelected and defuse Reagan’s stinging charges of appeasement. Obama has been reelected and is not running for anything. To the small degree that U.S. foreign policy is an issue in the upcoming 2014 midterm elections, the lame duck Obama himself doesn’t much care about the consequences of reduced U.S. stature on his party’s chances — or perhaps, for that matter, even care that much about his party’s chances.
2. Carter acknowledged that he had failed. He grudgingly accepted the fact that deterrence is acquired over time and with difficulty, while lost quickly and easily.
In contrast, Obama still feels that his foreign policy is a smashing success. The United States’ prior inordinate and undeserved stature abroad has been reset. Putin is of no concern, given Obama’s belief that gamesmanship, “macho schtick,” and diplomatic chess-playing are proof of unsophistication and rather silly. As far as the former Soviet republics go, arbitrary borders are always fluid anyway. Let them ebb and flow, as we deal with climate change.
3. Carter was iconic of nothing by 1980. He was an ineffective speaker and without a base of support. The press had tired of his uncharismatic whining and sermonizing. In short, Carter feared that the press thought he was weakening America.
Not Obama, our landmark first African-American president. The media are deeply invested in his success. His teleprompted eloquence still makes good sound bites. If Carter de facto blamed himself for the need to readjust radically and correct his prior mistakes, Obama believes that if there have been errors, they are those of the Republican House or manufactured by knee-jerk Fox News and talk-radio extremists. In 1979, most Americans conceded the mess that Carter’s sanctimoniousness had caused; 35 years later, most also see the wages of Obama’s failure, but only quietly so.
4. Finally, the country is somewhat different. True, Carter inhaled the fumes of Vietnam. But our current isolationism is more than just exhaustion over Iraq and Afghanistan. Foreign policy is now seen as antithetical to domestic spending, as military readiness comes only at the expense of public entitlements. With record percentages of Americans on state and federal help, Obama masterfully has framed old U.S. responsibilities as the crazy things that George W. Bush and his ilk incurred, which will only disrupt his more important effort to “fundamentally transform America.” Cyrus Vance gave way to more realistic advisers; the liberal Hillary Clinton is now considered pragmatic in comparison to what has followed.
There will be no Obama Doctrine. More likely we will see a doubling down on reducing U.S. influence — with the end of reshaping a too-prominent global profile, which itself was supposedly a result of unfairly acquired advantage.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373523/print
I agree, I don’t think Obama sweats this stuff, or much cares about it because he doesn’t really understand it or see how it affects his personal life, he really is Chauncey Gardener, he’s president and enjoying the life style and celebrity.
Some of the popularity fade probably penetrates a little and affects his mood, but not much.
Great, but depressing article.
The way Obama is handling the aggression of Putin in the Ukraine, Foreign Policy might just be an election issue as early as the mid-terms later this year.
Clearly will be an albatross around Hillary’s neck if things continue to spiral out of control. Reset with Russia? Let’s see that picture with the little orange button (and misspelled “Reset”) in every ad!
We don’t like being humiliated. The last few days have been just that with Putin and his senior people tweeting jokes about us and our weakness. Pretty painful stuff. Obama is living in another world. The Dems will pay at the ballot box.
BFL.
The Obama Doctrine is brief and understandable so the world’s aggressors will know the price they pay when they cross Barry’s red lines. These sanctions will stop them in their tracks:
1. No Visits to Disneyland
2. No American bank accounts
“Obama will not learn from his mistakes because he doesn’t believe that he has made any.”
As a representative of the bottom of the bottom in this country (in IQ), he never understood any relationship between his constituents and anything outside this country anyway. He is as American as halal food...
With all the talk of him being weak, I’m afraid Zer0 may do something stupid to ‘prove’ what a tough guy he can be.
By something stupid I mean drawing a line in the sand, threatening military action if Putin crosses that line.
Then Putin calls Zer0’s bluff.
Zer0 is an idiot and has surrounded himself with idiots.
Typical dims, think their powers of persuasion will win the day. No understanding of how other cultures/governments think.
Putin will intentionally push odumbo’s buttons to the hilt and eventually, get him so mad he (odumbo) will react (like he did when he kicked open a door because he was mad).
Odumbo is indeed weak but VERY, VERY dangerous to our country and the rest of the world. He could easily “break” under the pressure of having to define he self elevated ego. Buyer’s Beware!
VDH ping.
Obama is a disgrace to everything this nation stands for.
Proof that Affirmative Action & Diversity does not make the nation better, but weakens and downgrades it.
His entire time in the White Hut has been spent destroying his internal political enemies and not America’s interests. Putin knows he is dealing with a weak thin skinned pansy and will take advantage of that.
meant to say “not protecting America’s interests”.
Bump. I always read Victor David Hanson to my family.
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