Showing posts with label A Problem From Hell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Problem From Hell. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The predicate for Obama's foreign policy in Libya of multi-lateral 'Meals on wheels -with guns' - President Reticent



Comedy Central video:
Daily Show host Jon Stewart discusses the bombing in Libya with Aasif Mandvi and muse over President Obama's efforts to proceed without Sen. Richard Lugar's say-so.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/odyssey-dawn---unconstitutional-war


Stanley Kurtz
recounts the role of present-day
National Security Council advisor Samantha Power on Candidate Obama in the National Review Online, and how we now have gotten to the present point where our foreign policy seems to include what I can only call "Meals on wheels -with guns."
But it's likely that the Irish-born
Power, given her own background, probably doesn't know too many of the delivery drivers -the instruments of that policy she has helped formulate.

My guess is that Power probably doesn't care that many of the military personnel involved there DON'T KNOW why they are there, how long they'll be there, or even how they'll even know whether or not they are successful in their mission.
Seems like I recall someone once saying THAT sort of situation would never ever exist if he were in charge.

I guess Power will just email them the details later, after she's gotten a bite to eat after work, since she's clearly a 'Big Picture' woman who doesn't want to get bogged down in the minutia.


And when are we going to hear what George Clooney thinks after Obama has ignored what's taken place in The Sudan?



ABC News video: George Clooney Hopes Satellites Will Shed Light on Sudan, January 2, 2011.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-clooney-hopes-satellites-shed-light-sudan/story?id=12523421


Stanley Kurtz's
closer is classic:

As with health care, Obama’s talk isn’t working because he cannot afford to specify broader ideological motivations he knows the public won’t buy.
Precisely!


National Review Online

President Reticent
By Stanley Kurtz
March 22, 2011 10:26 A.M.

Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we’re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well.


Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing.


Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262725/president-reticent-stanley-kurtz

Meanwhile, almost nine years ago...
Audio of Samantha Power discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "A Problem From Hell" on NPR/WAMU-FM's Diane Rehm Show, March 27, 2002
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2002-03-27/samantha-power-problem-hell-basic

Audio of Power on NPR's Fresh Air, which I heard at the time, June 5, 2003, when I was still living up in the Washington area:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1287149


Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Lugar calls for debate on U.S. role in Libya
March 22, 2011 3:00 a.m.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110322/NEWS04/303229937