Mark Halperin, the political weathervane of Washington, judged Obama’s speech last night a success for a reason no Democrat should trumpet: George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence.
Halperin went on to say Obama “boxed in Republican detractors.” Foreign policy on Democratic terms is now null and void.
Since when did a Democrat sounding like George W. Bush signify success?
That’s where Democrats find themselves as Barack Obama heads into reelection. So I guess the reviews of the speech will please many on the Democratic side of the spectrum, because the Right is applauding. But with Miranda also now going the way of Bush and Gitmo still in business, it’s a long way from “change we can believe in.”
Ed Schultz parroted Halperin. “If those words were coming from George W. Bush…” trumpeted Ed Schultz. “This is responsible foreign policy…” he continued.
Bill Kristol agreed: I knew pretty early on during tonight’s speech that President Obama had rejoined—or joined—the historical American foreign policy mainstream.
God help us.
Joe Scarborough delivers the hypocrisy charge directed at the “American Left,” which is apt.
And how do they claim the moral high ground in Libya while not calling for the immediate invasion of Syria? The monstrous Bashar al-Assad regime is slaughtering his own people by the hundreds. More killings are sure to happen as that corrupt regime teeters on the brink of collapse.
In Yemen, the situation is no better. Government snipers shoot unarmed women and children from the rooftops of Sanaa. Should we follow Obama’s example in Libya and invade that country in the name of humanitarian relief? Or should we step into the breach in the Ivory Coast, where a terrifying civil war has led to a million refugees fleeing that country. And why do we not enter Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of innocents have been slaughtered over the past decade in a civil war of horrifying proportions?
Katrina vanden Heuvel, one of the few liberals to take a principled stand against what America is doing in Libya, has written in The Nation that the anti-war left has been silent since Obama took office because they don’t want to hurt the president’s reelection chances.
In defending Obama’s Libya offensive, they are compromising their own morals. The American left is also making it abundantly clear that it does not find all wars morally reprehensible — only those begun by Republicans.
Nothing Pres. Obama said last night convinced me Libya was in our vital interests or that the humanitarian crisis reached other events around the world, some unfolding right now. That we have no idea how this ends is another problem, as is the $600 million it’s cost so far.
But I was never a fan of George W. Bush, so Barack Obama’s foreign policy trajectory isn’t impressing me either.
