Jay Nordlinger:
Part I here
I think even anti-Obamites have to smile at a certain line from him. As Goldberg points out, presidential travel is a “massive military operation.” And early in his first term, Obama “noted ruefully to aides, ‘I have the world’s largest carbon footprint.’”
Probably.
I was taken aback by something Obama said. Let me quote it: “When I came into office, at the first Summit of the Americas that I attended, Hugo Chávez was still the dominant figure in the conversation. We made a very strategic decision early on, which was, rather than blow him up as this ten-foot giant adversary, to right-size the problem and say, ‘We don’t like what’s going on in Venezuela, but it’s not a threat to the United States.’”
By this, does Obama mean that his predecessor, George W. Bush, “wrong-sized” the problem? If so, he is dead-mistaken.
Let me quote John Negroponte, in an interview with me (2009). Negroponte, you recall, was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under Bush, and later the director of national intelligence. “I think one of the great things Mr. Bush did was not give Hugo Chávez the satisfaction of reacting to his various provocations. My sense is that that bothered Chávez. I don’t think Mr. Bush ever mentioned his name, frankly.”
Yup.
Many of us Obama critics have long noted: One of the worst things about him is that he thinks, or gives the impression that he thinks, that the world began with him. Avant lui, rien, or simply darkness.
Well, a high compliment! A head of state does not make the American president wait two hours? Maybe just an hour instead?!
President Bush did not rush into Afghanistan. He gave the Taliban — i.e., the Afghan government — every opportunity to cough up al-Qaeda, the attackers on 9/11. The Taliban refused. Bush went in.
In the months leading up to the Iraq War, Bush said, over and over, that he had to weigh the “risks of action and the risks of inaction.” This was hard, and necessary. He did it. And finally decided that the risks of inaction outweighed the risks of action.
I would have thought that seven years as president would have matured Obama about Bush, and the problems faced by a president. But he still talks like a grad student, occasionally.
Bush would have preferred to avoid the Afghan War, obviously. The Taliban was unyielding. Bush would have preferred to avoid the Iraq War, obviously. Saddam Hussein was unyielding. He refused to let inspectors in. Etc.
A big topic …
Jeffrey Goldberg asked whether this was realistic or fatalistic.
“It’s realistic,” Obama said. “But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. And at the end of the day, there’s always going to be some ambiguity.”
Well, there is not much ambiguity in Obama. He has told Ukrainians that, essentially, they are on their own. They don’t belong to NATO, after all.
Also, isn’t there some room between war against Russia and doing zero for the Ukrainians? Obama is a great setter-up of false choices.
Concerning this matter of ambiguity, a memory: The United States had long had a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about China and Taiwan. Would America come to Taiwan’s defense, if China attacked Taiwan? The U.S. had always tried to blur that.
Early in his first term, George W. Bush said yes: We would defend Taiwan.
I asked one of his key national-security aides, “Did Bush mean to change American policy or did he simply make a mistake, in speaking?”
The aide fixed me with a look — a twinkle in his eyes — and borrowed from an old advertising slogan: “Only his hairdresser knows for sure.”
“We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell. When I go to visit those countries, I’m going to be trying to figure out how we can, today, help them remove bombs that are still blowing off the legs of little kids. In what way did that strategy promote our interests?”
READ: Fidel Castro’s 1,500 Word Scathing Letter to Obama After His Visit to Cuba