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Obama and the Office of the Petulancy
It’s difficult to overstate how poorly Barack Obama performed at Monday’s press conference from the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey. As France deals with the aftermath of an ISIS attack leaving 132 dead (so far), hundreds wounded, and thousands of lives shattered, the ersatz leader of the free world responded with an embarrassing display of indifference, peevishness, and open contempt. He was less “President Obama” and more “Petulant Obama.”
As reporters lobbed obvious questions about Obama’s dismissive description of ISIS as a JV team, his broken promise to degrade and destroy the group, and the massive intelligence failure that rocked Europe, he seemed annoyed at all the fuss.
“There will be setbacks and there will be successes,” Obama said calmly. “The terrible events in Paris were a terrible and sickening setback.”
“Setback.” Many are shocked to see the US president use such a bloodless term for such a bloody war crime, but this was no improvisation. It was part of Obama’s prepared opening statement.
He quickly shifted to happy talk. “Even as we grieve with our French friends, however, we can’t lose sight that there has been progress being made.” American flags are at half-staff. We’re working closely with our French partners. A new agreement will streamline processes.
The bureaucratic boredom with which Obama delivered the lines was reminiscent of Michael Dukakis airily dismissing a debate hypothetical in which his wife was raped and murdered. Yes, Paris is a setback but we’ve lowered our flags. Next question.
“Isn’t it time for your strategy to change?” Jerome Cartillier of Agence France-Presse asked.
“Well, keep in mind what we have been doing,” he said without hesitation. “We have a military strategy that is putting enormous pressure on ISIL through airstrikes.… On the military front, we are continuing to accelerate what we do…. On the counterterrorism front, keep in mind that since I came into office, we have been worried about these kinds of attacks…. And every few weeks, I meet with my entire national security team and we go over every single threat stream that is presented…”
I meet with a team every few weeks. What more do you people want?
“There are going to be some things that we try that don’t work; there will be some strategies we try that do work,” Obama said. “And when we find strategies that work, we will double down on those.” Positively Churchillian.
The next question was from CBS: “A more than year-long bombing campaign in Iraq and in Syria has failed to contain the ambition and the ability of ISIS to launch attacks in the West. Have you underestimated their abilities? And will you widen the rules of engagement for US forces to take more aggressive action?”
“No, we haven’t underestimated our abilities,” he said immediately, barely masking his annoyance. “There has been an acute awareness on the part of my administration from the start that it is possible for an organization like ISIL… [to] have the capabilities to potentially strike in the West.”
“But understand that one of the challenges we have in this situation is, is that if you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people.”
Sigh. Next question.
Jim Avila: “In the days and weeks before the Paris attacks, did you receive warning in your daily intelligence briefing that an attack was imminent? If not, does that not call into question the current assessment that there is no immediate, specific, credible threat to the United States today? And secondly, if I could ask you to address your critics who say that your reluctance to enter another Middle East war, and your preference of diplomacy over using the military makes the United States weaker and emboldens our enemies.”
Obama: “Jim, every day we have threat streams coming through the intelligence transit. And as I said, every several weeks we sit down with all my national security, intelligence, and military teams to discuss various threat streams that may be generated.”
By this point, it was obvious that Professor Obama was very disappointed with his class:
“But what we do not do, what I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough, or make me look tough. And maybe part of the reason is because every few months I go to Walter Reed, and I see a 25-year-old kid who’s paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle. And so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may.
“We’ll do what’s required to keep the American people safe. And I think it’s entirely appropriate in a democracy to have a serious debate about these issues. If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the Chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning, or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people, and to protect people in the region who are getting killed, and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.”
We should be thankful he wasn’t making the statement from a golf course.
Most jarring about all the answers was President Obama’s blasé tone, as if he were discussing a zoning dispute in Poughkeepsie. Normally friendly journalists, whose networks had spent the weekend awash in harrowing details from Paris, kept rephrasing the question as if to say, “here’s one more chance to help you get this right.”
CNN’s Jim Acosta: “This is an organization that you once described as a JV team that evolved into a force that has now occupied territory in Iraq and Syria and is now able to use that safe haven to launch attacks in other parts of the world. How is that not underestimating their capabilities? And how is that contained, quite frankly? And I think a lot of Americans have this frustration that they see that the United States has the greatest military in the world, it has the backing of nearly every other country in the world when it comes to taking on ISIS. I guess the question is — and if you’ll forgive the language — is why can’t we take out these bastards?”
Obama, with a sigh: “Well, Jim, I just spent the last three questions answering that very question, so I don’t know what more you want me to add. I think I’ve described very specifically what our strategy is, and I’ve described very specifically why we do not pursue some of the other strategies that have been suggested.”
When NBC News’s Ron Allen tried yet again, Obama wasn’t having it: “All right, so this is another variation on the same question. And I guess — let me try it one last time.”
It wasn’t until the final question from an international journalist that the President finally showed some emotion and even anger at the truly horrible enemy he faces. Of course, Obama was talking about Republicans and their un-American thoughts about Syrian refugees.
The United States has to step up and do its part. And when I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims; when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution — that’s shameful. That’s not American.
ISIS might be responsible for setbacks, but only Republicans cause Obama shame.
Published in Foreign Policy, Islamist Terrorism, Military, Politics
Oh, yeah, and, you know, “protect” us by meeting with “his” team of experts… every few weeks.
What a putz.
We have to accept, though, that a large portion of Obama supporters will never be able to admit just how disastrous he is. They’re way too invested. It’s existential for them.
and he doesn’t like his critics’ “popping off.”
What a pathetic excuse for a president. He sickens me. He’s a categorical failure. I disagree. Even Dukaksis would have done better.
So much to say here.
No, exactly opposite.
We must get ISIS to say something mocking and unkind about Obama himself. Then…it will be war!
I believe it was Peg Noonan who talked about his “amour propre”. She Pegged it that time!
OK, Plan B. Someone must convince him that if he just met with ISIS, he could win them over, convert them to fanboys.
By the way, why’s it so ridiculous to prefer Christian refugees in immigration policy? Aren’t they the endangered party? The other folks are just looking for financial opportunity, those who aren’t looking for soft targets. Why not give asylum to the Yazidi? Why not the Copts? Is anyone closer to being on the verge of extinction?
.
He is truly kicking the can down the road…except the can is a genocidal group of maniacs.
OK, I just went over and watched a good deal of the press exchange. Obama really was pathetic. It was all cliches and talking points. It looked like he was half asleep. You know how you could tell he didn’t know what he was talking about? He kept punctuating his words with his hands over and over, way more than is natural. It was as if he knew he had nothing to say but if he did some hand waving he might get through the news conference. It reminded me of that disastrous first debate against Romney where he was shellacked. He’s just going through the motions. He’s an empty suit.
Obama is one sick puppy…with a huge following. Just as bad was that fool, Kerry.
I’m truly inspired by Barry’s soaring rhetoric.
A horrific thought: Would Barry’s response be any different had this happened on US soil?
Did he say ISIL was punching above their weight?
Notice how action-oriented the Left is when it comes to nationalizing health insurance (despite everyone minimally having access to hospital services by law) and crushing the energy industry because noted atmospheric scientist Al Gore says climate change will make the planet uninhabitable? These problems can’t wait for “debate” and a broad consensus. Something must be done NOW!
And, yet, when people who actually want to kill us actually succeed at, you know, maiming and killing westerners, the best they can offer is monthly meetings and (what did Kerry promise?) continued support of our friends. Oh, I’m sure the French are breathing a sigh of relief tonight now that SoS Kerry has touched down.
Gosh, if we weren’t constantly reminded otherwise by the Democrat propagandist media and progressive establishment (but, I repeat myself), we might think the President dislikes and disdains us.
Only the true believers buy what this guy’s selling. It’s disgusting.
In fact, local zoning disputes can get pretty heated. You owe Poughkeepsie an apology.
No.
From anyone else I would be shocked, but that is kind of what I expect from Obama. And that is sad.
I worry about this more than a non-conspiracy theorist ought to.
I get that America is a serious country, but in the eyes of much of the world, our President represents the entire country. He’s fundamentally an unserious person. Therefore, in their eyes, America isn’t a serious country.
I didn’t mean to besmirch anyone here; Ricochet has some of the most serious people in the country (Dime excepted, of course). My apologies if I gave that impression.
The President is the most serious person on earth. That’s precisely why he can’t function.
It’s worse than that . . . WE’VE paid him to be our enemy!
No, no, no. He’s doing us a favor deigning to serve as POTUS . . . we don’t deserve even one more backswing worth of his time.
I don’t ever recall another president speaking to/about people this way in public. Ever. He’s just incredibly bad on so many levels…
Your exactly correct, Terry. It is not Obama’s fault that he’s POTUS. But I hold the majority of the voters responsible.
That just insulted empty suits. Obama isn’t an empty suit: he’s a walking hole in the air.
Absolutely! He would give an impassioned plea to not judge an entire group on the basis of a few confused and misguided individuals, He would immediately call up the National Guard to protect American mosques. He would encourage the FBI to aggressively pursue the perpetrators so they might have their day in court. He would, however, appoint members from organizations like CAIR to monitor and oversee the Federal response to assure that no deep-seated, unconscious Islamophobia was allowed to influence the investigations.
Worst. President. Ever.
This performance has convinced me that he is being run by others, the proverbial empty suit. He just wants to run out the clock and get out of there, but events are conspiring that all major initiatives are going to explode over the next year and he is holding the bag while his handlers get to creep out of town.
Between Obamacare crashing, immigration out of control, defeat in the middle east and at least two or three other crises, it will get very ugly.
He will do nothing and the government will be paralyzed. Someone hand Biden a copy of the 25th amendment.
I think all of the analysis above is spot on. However, his comment on visiting the wounded at Walter Reed every few months is what shined for me. I believe that W did this weekly and from what I have heard this President doesn’t do hospitals. I want to be fair but………..
What’s a threat stream? More jargon.
I’m really tired of hearing that we cannot permanently eliminate radical Islamic ideology by military action. That they want to provoke an attack and, if we attack them, they will use that as a recruiting tool.
Sure. That’s all true. But if we don’t attack them, they will use that as an even better recruiting tool. “We kill the infidels with impunity! They are afraid of us!”
So if we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, then I choose the form of damnation that includes a lot of dead terrorists.
I fully recognize that it is hard to defeat guerrilla fighters who hide among the civilian population. But that is not the situation here. ISIS is not the Viet Cong. ISIS holds territory. It has military equipment. It has facilities for command and control, communications, weapons depots, training facilities, oil facilities, and on and on. Those things can’t fade away into the civilian population, and destroying those kinds of things is what our military does better than any force in the history of the world.
We have the best military in the world, all the way up until you get to the Commander in Chief.
I am just impressed that so many of you can actually listen to the man talk. I turned him off years ago, and have never regretted it.
Clearly Ricochet has a lot of masochists.