To one degree or another all American Presidents begin their Presidencies as foreign policy amateurs. But when a President is into his seventh year and is still wandering around in confusion it's not amateurishness that's the problem.
So Richard Epstein is wrong to call him that. What Barack Obama is is an ideologue whose ideology (anti American and universalist) comports poorly with reality. Much like Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson before him it's what he knows that ain't so that is the problem, starting with his assumption that American self interest is illegitimate and ending with the assumption that our enemies hate us because of their poverty and our past behavior.
Barack Obama constantly ascribes the basest motives to his countrymen while imputing the most honorable motives to our enemies. Which in the case of the Iranians is a catastrophic miscalculation But it will definitely get Barack Obama the prominent place in the history books that he so desperately wants. Although the copy is likely to be rather negative. Except in the leftist histories that are the only ones he and his smug, benighted academic friends ever read. So he's cool.
Isn't that grand?
No comments:
Post a Comment