What has Harvard done to us? I know it’s not surprising that a graduate of Harvard Law School would think like a grad of Harvard Business School, but do they have to be an exact match?
That’s what “everyone’ has to be thinking after President Obama’s UN address last week. If George W. Bush didn’t leap up and exclaim “he’s stealin’ my stuff” it was because he was watching the NFL instead.
Granted, calling ISIS the “network of death” isn’t quite as bad as labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—three nations who had given us plenty of attitude but little palpable harm—the “axis of evil.”1 But puff-chested lines like “There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force” are deeply disappointing. After al Qaeda murdered 2,300 Americans in New York and Washington, DC, we spent thirteen years, thousands of lives, and more than a trillion dollars re-arranging Iraq and Afghanistan, subjecting millions to hardship and misery for very little purpose at all. Is the spectacular cruelty of two beheadings going to summon a similar display of extended folly?
There is no doubt at all that President Obama had a very bad summer. His hopes of doing something dramatic in the area of immigration faded into a humiliating retreat in the face of the niño invasion earlier this year. As for the environment, well, he still can’t work up the nerve to either approve or disapprove the Keystone Pipeline. As for fracking, well, he won’t say nuthin’ but clearly he loves it.2
So, like so many presidents confronted with tough choices at home and a fractious Congress, overseas adventures start to look a lot more fun. This morning’s “AOL News” showed some bad-ass U.S. jets “pounding” enemy positions. Hey, that’s the kind of news a president likes to see.
Afterwords
The president also went out of his way to characterize the issues raised by the conflict in Ukraine entirely in terms of “U.S. Good/Russia Bad!”, despite the fact that the U.S. is, obviously, going to acquiesce in Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its expanded role in east Ukraine. The liberal internationalists, who now seem to control both sides of Obama’s brain, insist on conducting our policy vis-à-vis Russia and Eastern Europe as payback for the crimes of Stalin (or at least pretending to do so) and Putin, though a wooden-headed authoritarian nationalist, is simply no Stalin, and it’s folly to attempt to make him pay penance for crimes he didn’t commit.
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Is it rude to point out that North Korea, the only officially evil country that actually possesses nuclear weapons, has more or less fallen off the threat radar screen these days? Is it possible that these “rogue nations” seem more threatening before they get the bomb than after? Just sayin’. ↩︎
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And why shouldn’t he? It’s creating jobs and keeping oil prices low. What’s not to like? ↩︎
