Ah, Obama, our muddle-headed philosopher-king. He strains valiantly, but he is deeply confused by the rupture between dream and reality. Take all that stuff about closing down Guantanamo, ending extraordinary rendition and so on. He meant it at the time, I’m sure, but never having had a real job or been responsible for much, he just didn’t understand how the world works. So later, he had to back down, and admit, confusingly, that all that Bush stuff he once hated was kinda cool after all. Or at least unavoidable.
Then there is his bizarre foreign policy which largely consists of pissing off allies and sucking up to enemies. Consider Iran (our enemy) for instance — riots for democracy over there and it took him over a week to say anything much, and it wasn’t much, and was loaded with unctuous references to the Supreme Leader. Consider Egypt (our ally) on the other hand — riots for democracy and it was: Mubarak go now, followed by — well maybe not now, followed by — oh alright then, if you have to.
See how confusing that is?
I know that Obama thinks that by being nice to enemies such as Iran they will be nice to us, but this is the reasoning of a naive child. What a fortunate boy he must have been, to never have encountered a bully in the playground! For he doesn’t understand the psychology of violence at all. Kindness displayed to those that despise you is regarded by them as great weakness; while betraying those that support you alienates all your other friends.Obviously.
Neither rule is hard to grasp, but our president doesn’t seem to have learned them.
And then there are the shenanigans over the bin Laden death photos. He dithered for 3 days, teasing us with the promise of maybe releasing them, before deciding not to release them. Why? Lest it inflame our enemies. As if shooting their hero in the head was not enough to inflame them, as if they were not already perpetually inflamed, by everything we do.
You see according to Obama’s logic, shooting a beardy jihad man in the head is very cool. However showing a photo of said man with a bullet in his head is in bad taste.
That’s a line I find difficult to draw.
Our president is a very confused man.
- Author Bio [1]
- Latest Posts [2]
Daniel Kalder [3]
Latest posts by Daniel Kalder (Posts [4])
- Book Review: Retroworld (plus, why I hate Star Trek) [5] - April 3, 2014
- A very expensive fungus [6] - October 16, 2013
- The secret rituals of history’s most creative minds [7] - October 9, 2013
- Apparently we are all getting very old [8] - October 3, 2013
- Vasily Grossman: from Stalingrad to toilet trouble [9] - August 28, 2013