Drinking_with_Skeletons • 17 hours ago
My takeaway from the interview is that, at his core, Barack Obama sees no reason to invest US resources and personnel in any issue that is not directly of interest to US interests, and sees a world that is interested in goading the US into doing just that when it isn't viciously destroying itself. He also thinks that inserting ourselves into foreign conflicts that don't directly benefit us is wasteful at best and detrimental to US power and stability at worst.
Why is that controversial? He could certainly have been more tactful in his interview regarding foreign leaders, but he's not wrong that there is no particular reason why we need to foot the bill for Israel or the UK. He's not wrong that Ukraine--a miserable post-Soviet puppet state--isn't worth fighting for, and that Putin isn't gaining some great prize by expending effort on it. He's not wrong that a strong alliance in Southeast Asia is a good bulwark against the Chinese. He's not wrong that the Middle East is a sectarian hellhole that won't be fixed anytime soon by an American president; if none in the past century could do it, why is his refusal to piss away time and resources attempting it a bad decision?
Indeed, Mr. Frum, this whole article can be summed up as a rather, yes, disappointing look into your world views. Barack Obama has tried--not always successfully--by his own admission to lead the country in a way that, in any sane world, would be considered wise: he valued Americans' interests above others, did not seek to weaken others if it was not necessary to American interests, did not default to the costly use of military force when it was not needed, and continues to strive to build key alliances while putting distance between the US and toxic corners of the globe. Would that the average person approached their own life with such common sense.
m w • 2 hours ago
Frum does not dispute any of Obama's judgements of fact or his appraisals of the actions of US allies, but concludes that the less than ideal outcomes are the result of Obama's lack of leadership. This is the Cheny-Bush doctrine from which Frum briefly demurred and for which was fired from his Bush White House post. He now wanders in the wilderness alone and unloved except by tolerant Democrats and non-existent Republican moderates.
He remarks, in a rewrite of history dictated by the Republican party line,
"A president who justly criticized his predecessor for poor postwar
planning in Iraq launched his own war in Libya with no postwar plan at
all."
France and the UK together with Libyan insurgents launched the war, and at the behest of NATO allies, the US provided air cover for a limited period. Obama declined to allow the US to be drawn into another ground conflict. If Frum believes that another full scale invasion by the US and postwar occupation would have been the better course, he can urge one of the Republican candidates to propose this strategy.
Liam781 • 18 hours ago
Mr Frum neglects that Obama was elected and reelected on a platform get out of the Middle East and to be far more skeptical about hot intervention, and Frum's real gripe is not so much with Obama as with the American people who elected and reelected him and with the framers of the US constitution.
The US constitutional system is designed to frustrate and hobble hot-wars except in two situations:
1. Short surgical actions that wrap up within a congressional session.
2. Existential wars that take not much more than two congressional sessions. (The War of 1812, the Civil War and World War II would have been very hard to sustain for many years longer under our constitutional system. The Cold War was a finesse produced with a fairly deep understanding of the weaknesses of our constitutional system to operate otherwise.)
Why are congressional sessions so important? Because: (1) the division of powers in the US system (no unitary executive), (2) the power of the budget purse requiring affirmative approval of outlays, and (3) their relative brevity - two years. There is not a single long war in US history where American voters were not restive as the wars continued (see above). Even Lincoln and FDR would have found it hard to sustain their wars for another full congressional session and then beyond. It cannot be sustained on presidential leadership alone in our system. That's fool's gold.
I can name one area of the globe that presents much more serious threats to the USA than the Middle East....Meso-America. (No, I am not riding Mr Trump's anti-immigration train on this one.) It's in our existential interest to have thriving states in Meso-America. Read a map. Far more important to the USA than the Middle East.
lumistrophe • 19 minutes ago
Obama is a man possessed of high intelligence and progressive idealism.
His primary error was overestimating the presence of those qualities in the political establishments of America and Europe, which are largely dominated by venal and self-serving but pragmatic politicians, who have sold their souls to the military corporate media and tailor their lies to the huge mass of ill-educated Americans who elect them.
philly doug • 2 hours ago
Mr. Frum,
Quelle suprise!
In 2008, you thought President Obama was weak and naive and grandiose. And in 2016, your considered assessment is he's been weak and naive and grandiose.
Short term memory problems? Weren't you previously employed in Dubya's white house? Raging foreign policy successes, one after the other, from that group.
I mean, I get it. Sort of.
You worked for the most glaringly incompetent Oval Office team in the past hundred years, and your job was to concoct almost plausible, pseudo intellectual soundbites defending one catastrophe after the next. (Kind of like what you get paid to do for The Atlantic now. Sweet gigs.) This never required any actual knowledge, logical consistency or basic morality-- I mean, how could anyone in Dubya's frat lounge of a west wing, with a straight face, argue from a position logical consistency or basic morality? What with the how 'torture becomes legal because we call it something else and so we can say we comply with the Geneva Convention, except it's an international accord, so it doesn't even apply to us in Guantanamo or Abu Gharib anyway' blather you were paid to shill.
But right, you've got something to say about President Obama's foreign policy.
So does this guy Andrew Bacevich. Hey look! He's got an essay on the same website that lets you stroke your ego on their dime, and on the very same subject:
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
Fancy that. You might read it sometime. Since, unlike you, this guy has actual credentials, and expertise, and isn't simply peddling ideological sputterings:
*ANDREW J. BACEVICH is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of the forthcoming book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.*
Hmm, and what does Prof. Bacevich have to say on the subject?
“Much was made early in Obama’s presidency about his putative affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, the moral theologian and proponent of Christian realism. Goldberg’s account substantiates the president’s Niebuhrian inclinations, especially evident in his willingness to question the reigning shibboleths of U.S. policy.
By shibboleths, I mean those precepts, dating from World War II and the early Cold War, that still pervade the foreign-policy establishment, accepted as valid not because they are empirically correct but because they are comfortingly familiar. As such, they obviate any need to think. For the sake of convenience, we may sum up those shibboleths in a single sentence: America must lead. Implicit in this summons to “lead”—a euphemism for the threatened or actual use of armed force—is the vision of a world in which the forces of light vie against the forces of darkness, with America charged with ensuring the triumph of good over evil.”
Boy oh boy, Mr. Frum, that second paragraph is a doozy. It should have the heading 'what David Frum uses to form his arguments when he excretes fumes from various orifices'.
This line in particular has Frum all over it, doesn't it: "those precepts, dating from World War II and the early Cold War, that still pervade the foreign-policy establishment, accepted as valid not because they are empirically correct but because they are comfortingly familiar. As such, they obviate any need to think."
To paraphase the venerable Dean Wormer of Faber College: "Simple minded and self-congratulatory is no way to go through life, son."
You have literally nothing of value to offer conversations about serious issues, and you have been happy to sell yourself to people who have done devastating damage to the country and the world. But I'm sure the checks you cash convince you you've been right all along.
My takeaway from the interview is that, at his core, Barack Obama sees no reason to invest US resources and personnel in any issue that is not directly of interest to US interests, and sees a world that is interested in goading the US into doing just that when it isn't viciously destroying itself. He also thinks that inserting ourselves into foreign conflicts that don't directly benefit us is wasteful at best and detrimental to US power and stability at worst.
Why is that controversial? He could certainly have been more tactful in his interview regarding foreign leaders, but he's not wrong that there is no particular reason why we need to foot the bill for Israel or the UK. He's not wrong that Ukraine--a miserable post-Soviet puppet state--isn't worth fighting for, and that Putin isn't gaining some great prize by expending effort on it. He's not wrong that a strong alliance in Southeast Asia is a good bulwark against the Chinese. He's not wrong that the Middle East is a sectarian hellhole that won't be fixed anytime soon by an American president; if none in the past century could do it, why is his refusal to piss away time and resources attempting it a bad decision?
Indeed, Mr. Frum, this whole article can be summed up as a rather, yes, disappointing look into your world views. Barack Obama has tried--not always successfully--by his own admission to lead the country in a way that, in any sane world, would be considered wise: he valued Americans' interests above others, did not seek to weaken others if it was not necessary to American interests, did not default to the costly use of military force when it was not needed, and continues to strive to build key alliances while putting distance between the US and toxic corners of the globe. Would that the average person approached their own life with such common sense.
m w • 2 hours ago
Frum does not dispute any of Obama's judgements of fact or his appraisals of the actions of US allies, but concludes that the less than ideal outcomes are the result of Obama's lack of leadership. This is the Cheny-Bush doctrine from which Frum briefly demurred and for which was fired from his Bush White House post. He now wanders in the wilderness alone and unloved except by tolerant Democrats and non-existent Republican moderates.
He remarks, in a rewrite of history dictated by the Republican party line,
"A president who justly criticized his predecessor for poor postwar
planning in Iraq launched his own war in Libya with no postwar plan at
all."
France and the UK together with Libyan insurgents launched the war, and at the behest of NATO allies, the US provided air cover for a limited period. Obama declined to allow the US to be drawn into another ground conflict. If Frum believes that another full scale invasion by the US and postwar occupation would have been the better course, he can urge one of the Republican candidates to propose this strategy.
Liam781 • 18 hours ago
Mr Frum neglects that Obama was elected and reelected on a platform get out of the Middle East and to be far more skeptical about hot intervention, and Frum's real gripe is not so much with Obama as with the American people who elected and reelected him and with the framers of the US constitution.
The US constitutional system is designed to frustrate and hobble hot-wars except in two situations:
1. Short surgical actions that wrap up within a congressional session.
2. Existential wars that take not much more than two congressional sessions. (The War of 1812, the Civil War and World War II would have been very hard to sustain for many years longer under our constitutional system. The Cold War was a finesse produced with a fairly deep understanding of the weaknesses of our constitutional system to operate otherwise.)
Why are congressional sessions so important? Because: (1) the division of powers in the US system (no unitary executive), (2) the power of the budget purse requiring affirmative approval of outlays, and (3) their relative brevity - two years. There is not a single long war in US history where American voters were not restive as the wars continued (see above). Even Lincoln and FDR would have found it hard to sustain their wars for another full congressional session and then beyond. It cannot be sustained on presidential leadership alone in our system. That's fool's gold.
I can name one area of the globe that presents much more serious threats to the USA than the Middle East....Meso-America. (No, I am not riding Mr Trump's anti-immigration train on this one.) It's in our existential interest to have thriving states in Meso-America. Read a map. Far more important to the USA than the Middle East.
lumistrophe • 19 minutes ago
Obama is a man possessed of high intelligence and progressive idealism.
His primary error was overestimating the presence of those qualities in the political establishments of America and Europe, which are largely dominated by venal and self-serving but pragmatic politicians, who have sold their souls to the military corporate media and tailor their lies to the huge mass of ill-educated Americans who elect them.
philly doug • 2 hours ago
Mr. Frum,
Quelle suprise!
In 2008, you thought President Obama was weak and naive and grandiose. And in 2016, your considered assessment is he's been weak and naive and grandiose.
Short term memory problems? Weren't you previously employed in Dubya's white house? Raging foreign policy successes, one after the other, from that group.
I mean, I get it. Sort of.
You worked for the most glaringly incompetent Oval Office team in the past hundred years, and your job was to concoct almost plausible, pseudo intellectual soundbites defending one catastrophe after the next. (Kind of like what you get paid to do for The Atlantic now. Sweet gigs.) This never required any actual knowledge, logical consistency or basic morality-- I mean, how could anyone in Dubya's frat lounge of a west wing, with a straight face, argue from a position logical consistency or basic morality? What with the how 'torture becomes legal because we call it something else and so we can say we comply with the Geneva Convention, except it's an international accord, so it doesn't even apply to us in Guantanamo or Abu Gharib anyway' blather you were paid to shill.
But right, you've got something to say about President Obama's foreign policy.
So does this guy Andrew Bacevich. Hey look! He's got an essay on the same website that lets you stroke your ego on their dime, and on the very same subject:
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
Fancy that. You might read it sometime. Since, unlike you, this guy has actual credentials, and expertise, and isn't simply peddling ideological sputterings:
*ANDREW J. BACEVICH is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of the forthcoming book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.*
Hmm, and what does Prof. Bacevich have to say on the subject?
“Much was made early in Obama’s presidency about his putative affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, the moral theologian and proponent of Christian realism. Goldberg’s account substantiates the president’s Niebuhrian inclinations, especially evident in his willingness to question the reigning shibboleths of U.S. policy.
By shibboleths, I mean those precepts, dating from World War II and the early Cold War, that still pervade the foreign-policy establishment, accepted as valid not because they are empirically correct but because they are comfortingly familiar. As such, they obviate any need to think. For the sake of convenience, we may sum up those shibboleths in a single sentence: America must lead. Implicit in this summons to “lead”—a euphemism for the threatened or actual use of armed force—is the vision of a world in which the forces of light vie against the forces of darkness, with America charged with ensuring the triumph of good over evil.”
Boy oh boy, Mr. Frum, that second paragraph is a doozy. It should have the heading 'what David Frum uses to form his arguments when he excretes fumes from various orifices'.
This line in particular has Frum all over it, doesn't it: "those precepts, dating from World War II and the early Cold War, that still pervade the foreign-policy establishment, accepted as valid not because they are empirically correct but because they are comfortingly familiar. As such, they obviate any need to think."
To paraphase the venerable Dean Wormer of Faber College: "Simple minded and self-congratulatory is no way to go through life, son."
You have literally nothing of value to offer conversations about serious issues, and you have been happy to sell yourself to people who have done devastating damage to the country and the world. But I'm sure the checks you cash convince you you've been right all along.
Of
all the paradoxes, maybe the most important will be this: A president
who came to office so deeply uneasy about American leadership has—over
almost eight years of not providing it—reminded the rest of the world
why that leadership is so badly needed.
Dinica Roman http://www.theatlantic.com/.../the-obama-doctrine/471525/...
The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world.
theatlantic.com|By Jeffrey Goldberg
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