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The Superflous Commander in Chief
As I watched President Obama’s press conference in Antalya, Turkey, I began to feel that I was seeing an historic moment unfold.
It was deceptively like what we’re used to, full of condescension, impatience, hubris, straw men and false choices. He mentioned multiple times that he has to meet every few weeks with a bunch of guys to go over details, that it’s complicated. He reminded more that one journalist that he’d already answered ‘that’ question. He diminished his critics’ understanding and motives.
But he did not look forward. He was the politician voting present. He was himself, untouched by events, incapable of even the awareness that in the days that follow the logic of those events may mark his words today as the beginning of his loss of relevance.
He seemed the least serious person in the room.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism, Politics
Larry 3435: “He has already pronounced ISIS (or ISIL, to him, for some unknown reason)”. Calling ISIS ISIL allows one to seem more wise than all others–the Levant, you know–and draws attention from Mr O’s red line in SYRIA which was the starting pistol for all of this.
Florida seems to be attempting to get Congress to play a role.
Unfortunately 1967mustangman is likely correct, there will be enough states such as Washington that the matter may end up being moot.
…. you can see forever.
Let’s start with a few hundred kilotons of bombs, and then take another look. Destroy ISIS’s command and control, communications, transportation, oil, munitions, and training camps. Remove all limitations in the rules of engagement except for deliberate attacks on civilian, non-strategic targets. Arm the Kurds. There are hundreds of significant things we could do. Instead, President Moron is releasing Guantanamo terrorists and sending them back to fight for ISIS.
Yeah. I guess my decoder ring wasn’t working.
Yep.
Over the last 6 years the field command of the armed services has been decimated. The Pentagon is almost entirely politician generals, seeking office from the C-in-C. It is the para-military of the president’s cabinet; IRS, DHS, Environment Dept., Dept. of Education, and all those other departments which have been arming up who will keep us down. The National Guards are run by the states politically, but the Pentagon bureaucracy can tie their hands. The local police will be contained by Black Lives Matter and the Occupy crowd, and hundreds of thousands of “Muslim refugees” will ramp up the required chaos.
All of the elements for Marshall law will be in place by next October.
I think R&L’s point was that we might this time get a meaningful election instead of the usual Prog v. Prog stylized opera.
[Ok, after reading #37 I’ll take that back.]
Quite right, the change is in everyone but Obama. It was as if, for him, it was the November 12 world.
I think the cognitive dissonance we here are used to feeling when listening to Obama today became a far more widely and palpably shared experience.
The complex state of Europe 101 years ago seems no less stable than today. I wonder what early 21st Century trench warfare will be like? Your Tinder app hooks you up with people who have VD?
I agree that Obama is a most serious ideologue and operative. That’s why he has usually been the most serious person in any room. But I also think that today, two days after the Paris attacks, the limits of his deeper intelligence were as widely visible and embarrassing as was the absence of clothes on the Emperor.
The functional power of his single-minded intention to transform has owed much to the unfocused attention of others; yes, he’s serious, but now others are too, it’s a whole new game and he’s not at all quick on his feet.
It’s seriousness that puts lead in one’s shoes.
I just want to make it clear, that even if BO was the most serious person in the room… He’s still a joke.
Exactly!
Most Comedians do better. The tremendous damage he has done is not funny.
Would that it were so. This will quickly be forgotten and the press will be able to get back to their defend and dissemble campaign.
I want to annihilate ISIS and Islamists everywhere. I want to make them a desert and call it peace. I want to be injudicious in killing them and anyone who acts like them, or says vaguely supportive things about them.
Only with such ruthless overkill will we stop this death cult. This would show that we are not just the strong horse, but leave no doubt that we are the proverbial 800 pound gorilla who is pissed-off. Let’s given them their apocalypse. Such terrifying, justified destruction would create decades of diplomatic capital for all the soft-headed do-gooders and “realists” to squander for many administrations to come.
And we don’t clean up the mess afterwards. That would send the strongest message: that PC is dead.
ISIS delenda est.