{"id":26605,"date":"2015-09-29T10:35:30","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T14:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=26605"},"modified":"2015-09-29T10:35:30","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T14:35:30","slug":"for-president-obama-reality-is-optional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=26605","title":{"rendered":"For President Obama, Reality Is Optional"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bret Stephens<\/a> posted an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about President Obama’s<\/a> recent speech to the United Nations<\/a>. Any resemblance between the speech and reality was purely coincidental.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Barack Obama told the U.N.\u2019s General Assembly on Monday he\u2019s concerned that \u201cdangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world.\u201d It\u2019s nice of the president to notice, just don\u2019t expect him to do much about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recall that it wasn\u2019t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war was receding<\/a>. Al Qaeda was on a path todefeat<\/a>. ISIS was \u201ca jayvee team\u201d in \u201cLakers <\/a>uniforms.\u201d Iraq was an Obama administration success <\/a>story. Bashar Assad<\/a>\u2019s days werenumbered<\/a>. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder <\/a>to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya wasvindication <\/a>for the \u201clead from behind\u201d approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success<\/a>, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America<\/a>, the \u201ctrend lines<\/a> are good.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOverall,\u201d as he told Tom Friedman in August 2014\u2014shortly after ISIS had seized control of Mosul and as Vladimir Putin<\/a> was muscling his way into eastern Ukraine\u2014\u201cI think there\u2019s still cause for optimism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like optimism, but I am also a big fan of reality. President Obama’s foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. His latest ‘accomplishment’–the Iran Treaty–will bring a nuclear arms race to the Middle East and eventually war. The Treaty will fill the coffers of terrorists and lead them to new heights of terrorism. Great.<\/p>\n

The article further states:<\/p>\n

In late-era South Africa and the Soviet Union<\/a>, where men like F.W. de Klerk<\/a> and Mikhail Gorbachev<\/a> had a sense of shame, the Obama theory had a chance to work. In Iran in 2009, or in Syria today, it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

(The Obama theory is was\u00a0expressed in his 2009 contention <\/a>in Prague that \u201cmoral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Then again, that distinction doesn\u2019t much matter to this president, since he seems to think that seizing the moral high ground is victory enough. Under Mr. Obama, the U.S. is on \u201cthe right side of history\u201d when it comes to the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, or the killing fields in Syria, or the importance of keeping Afghan girls in school.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having declared our good intentions, why muck it up with the raw and compromising exercise of power? In Mr. Obama\u2019s view, it isn\u2019t the man in the arena who counts. It\u2019s the speaker on the stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, Mr. Obama believes history is going his way. \u201cWhat? Me worry?\u201d says the immortal Alfred E. Neuman<\/a>, and that seems to be the president\u2019s attitude toward Mr. Putin\u2019s interventions in Syria (\u201cdoomed to fail<\/a>\u201d) and Ukraine (\u201cnot so smart<\/a>\u201d), to say nothing of his sang-froid when it comes to the rest of his foreign-policy debacles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do believe that moral leadership is important, but I question how we can be moral leaders when we are killing over one million babies a year, selling their aborted baby parts for profit, and funding the organization doing most of the work. I believe that we have lost our morals and need to find them before we suffer the consequences of our deeds. Just because we choose to call ourselves moral does not mean that we are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bret Stephens posted an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about President Obama’s recent speech to the United Nations. Any resemblance between the speech and reality was purely coincidental. The article reports: Barack Obama told the U.N.\u2019s General Assembly on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,9437,3327],"class_list":["post-26605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-mikhail-gorbachev","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26606,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26605\/revisions\/26606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}