Leaderless leadership
Just by the title you know that I’m thinking about President Obama. You are right. I am.
This time I was pleased to hear both President Putin and President Obama speak about the Syria disaster. Putin got it right, and Obama wrong. Why? President Obama is hoping that he can continue his ineffective and disastrous (for the Syrian public and the world) path until he escapes the presidency next year.
His hope is that he can stop the pot from boiling over before he leaves office, so that the next president will really have to deal with the mess that he and Bush made.
He’d rather be giving speeches (prattle) and pretend that he is still running for office than running our country. He lost interest in the later and is marking time until he gets out.
It’s called running out the clock by doing next to nothing. I have no doubts that he’ll make millions making speeches to his sycophants, (as if they think it will make a difference to them) just like George W. Bush who has capitalized on his disastrous presidency. Read this.
And that means sending in “boots on the ground,” that are already there for snatch and other raids. Special forces are still “boots on the ground.” I suppose it all depends on what that phrase means, but it’s not a trope. That’s something similar to President Clinton asking what the meaning of the word “is” is.
When I ran for Congress, one of my positions (May 2013) was (and is) that our foreign policy has been a disaster for over fifty years.
We cause much of the world’s turmoil and then turn away and take our marbles home sulking that the foreign governments regimes don’t like being deposed and replaced with soon-to-be failed states. Think Libya, Iraq (soon to be), Egypt (getting there), Afghanistan (already has that title), Yemen and so on.
The only way to fix our mess is to change our attitude to dictator, murderer, evil-doer, butcher, despot, oppressor, tyrant, President al-Assad and work with him to force the terrorists into Iraq from Syria and simultaneously work with the worthless Iraqi army to push them towards Syria.
You may think that we would never do that. But if you study history, there was even an instance of American forces joining with the German army (our enemy) during the last days of the Second World War to defeat the SS! You don’t believe it, but read this and you will.
It’s better an “evil” you know than the one you don’t. I think that IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is one of the dictionary definitions of evil. They became evil as without a government bureaucracy they can and do anything in the areas they control. They do.
When IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh are caught between the two forces, the can be killed and go to their heaven. With a little luck, it will be standing room only.
Perhaps we could help settle the Yemeni civil war while we’re at it. Ooops, I forgot. It isn’t getting any media coverage here since Saudi Arabia is in the mix killing people left and right, and they are our alleged fair-weather friend. The same goes for Bahrain.
As an aside, I have noticed that the media almost always avoids referring to the al-Assad government as the “al-Assad government,” but prefaces al-Assad with a pejorative term – the dictator, murderer, evil-doer, butcher, despot, oppressor, tyrant and so on.
Why? Using the word “government” infers legitimacy. Our media takes its cues from our government and provides not-so-subtle descriptions to maintain access to our senior politicians. If the reporters lose that access, they lose their jobs.
So will we change our position to something sane? It’s unlikely, as President Obama is sulking that Putin got it right and is proactively working to fix our mess.
When he makes progress, he will make our government look like children and amateurs. They are.
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Editor’s note, October 27, 2015. As I wrote, the “Boots on the Ground” pledge means little or nothing. Perhaps if our soldiers are required to wear tennis shoes in combat, then President Obama can continue his “No Boots on the Ground” during his presidency?
