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

The Daily Show - Odyssey Dawn - Unconstitutional War
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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

Brian Francisco, Washington editor

March 22, 2011 3:00 a.m.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110322/NEWS04/303229937

Rejecting Pixie Lott's 'Boys And Girls' together policy paradigm, Obama's Cabinet was "Boys against girls" over military intervention in Libya

Pixie Lott - Boys And Girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7y1MdlXclM

Rejecting Ambassador Pixie Lott's 'Boys And Girls' policy paradigm, two reporters at the New York Times and POLITICO's Ben Smith on his blog say that it was actually a case of "Boys against girls" over Libya in the Obama Cabinet.

IF this sort of story had happened under Bush 43, David Brooks would be saying that misplaced sentimentality had weighed-in at the worst possible moment, when clear-headed logic and action was what was necessary.
But it's Obama, so...

POLITICO.com
Boys against girls over Libya?
By Ben Smith
March 20, 2011 pol

There's been quite a bit of chatter today about the notion that a cadre of human-rights-minded women -- Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton -- fought and won an internal debate over Libya. But White House officials and close observers outside government pushed back hard on the idea of a crucial internal split Sunday, arguing that Obama was pressed to action not by the internal dynamic but by the situation on the ground.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0311/Boys_against_girls_over_Libya.html

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New York Times
Obama Takes Hard Line With Libya After Shift by Clinton
By Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Myers
March 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.

Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html

But if it fails, will Susan Power ever be seen again on TV news chat shows while Obama is president? Or will that be blamed on Gen. Mullen?
Hmm-m...

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By the way, since it was NOT mentioned in the South Florida news media -and I looked- in the ramp-up to Obama's Latin America trip, Brazil abstained on the U.N. vote on Libya.
It had a chance to do something of significance-it blinked.
Again.

And this is the country that actually wants to be a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council?
Nej tack!!!

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/19/v-fullstory/2123799/obama-opens-new-chapter-in-relations.html

That my friends is why despite its large size and immense resources, Brazil remains firmly seated at the children's table, not the adult table, until further notice, no matter what the Miami Herald's reporters and columnists churn out by the barrels about their alleged grandness.

That perpetual adolescence plus, well, it's too self-congratulatory nature, and, frankly, being a country that most Americans could really care less about -because it has done so little that most Americans care about or respect, much less, what well-informed Americans care about or respect.
Brazil is a very large Belgium, and Americans care not a whit about Belgium, either.

I will soon tell you in this space about a simple test those self-evident, self-promoting Herald reporters and columnists won't dare do publicly because it would so easily show the absurdity and emptiness of their grand pronouncements about Brazil.
Like so many of their previous overwrought words about the importance of South America to the U.S. in the future, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PixieLottVEVO
http://www.youtube.com/user/pixieofficial
http://www.youtube.com/user/pixielott
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

REMIX


Pixie Lott - Boys And Girls - Remix Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_NdMyf9j0

I once knew a girl from Essex...