A.J. DiCintio
You are no JFK, Mr. President
By A.J. DiCintio
If you're like me, you may well have reacted to last week's murderous attacks by shouting something like the following, intoning the word "this" and the names of two nations with special sarcastic force:
"With all the trust and money we send to Washington, this is how the administration protects our embassies and consulates in countries such as Egypt and Libya!"
Of course, it's a sad truth we've shouted the same kind of exclamation far too many times.
And it's all the more sad and disturbing we were forced to scream its most recent iteration not just in a post 9/11 world but a world in which the acid rains of an oxymoronic "Arab Spring" have permitted mad, misogynistic theocrats and their terrorist brethren to flourish in the national soil.
However, while we may be angry, we shouldn't be surprised that U.S. centers in Cairo and Benghazi were protected as if they were in Ottawa or Osaka, given that President Obama's attitude regarding a fundamental principle of foreign policy is directly opposed to the one traditionally held by the American people and their presidents.
Here is that principle expressed eloquently by President John F. Kennedy:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Pay any price to defend the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people. . .
Sounds like the kind of rhetoric leaders of today's Democratic Party, together with their true-believing media sycophants, denounce as dangerous "Don't Tread on Me" Tea Party extremism.
Of course, it's anything but extreme because the substance of Kennedy's words comports with the ideas and examples the Founders bequeathed to the nation and which were evident in the leadership exhibited by presidents as politically diverse as TR, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan.
In contrast, Barack Obama's foreign policy vision (like his social and economic philosophy) represents a composite of dangerously soft-minded leftist idealism and a just-as-dangerous belief in his pridefully perceived messianic powers.
Regarding the latter, candidate Obama publicly revealed the reality of his perverse love affair with the first person singular pronoun as early as November, 2007, when, in an interview with New Hampshire Public radio (breitbart.com), he began a response to a question about how his "background and experience" will help "repair [America's] negative image in the world" with this stunning example of egotism:
"I truly believe that the day I'm inaugurated not only does the country look at itself differently but the world looks at America differently."
He continued with the following example:
"If I'm reaching out to the Muslim world, they understand that I've lived in a Muslim country . . . and that I understand their point of view."
He then concluded by characterizing that torrent of I's as "powerful tools."
In truth, however, it gives rise to these dangerous realities:
He ignores the fact that every fanatical Muslim committed to destroying free, open cultures with unbridled acts of terror mocks the tools he speaks of as power-less.
Moreover, he discusses America's relationship with a Muslim world plagued by profound evils not by emphasizing the need for the American people and their leaders to remain firmly committed to their nation's highest principles but by exalting himself.
No wonder, then, that after last week's atrocities, his response was to instruct his press secretary to make the morally vacuous, intellectually obscene statement that the murders were directed "not to United States policy. . . not to the American people" but merely to an internet video "offensive to Muslims."
But again, we ought not express surprise; for deep in Obama's mind, a voice surely insists upon an Arab Spring characterized entirely by green, flowering goodness, arguing, "I gave a speech in Cairo, didn't I?"
Finally, there is this profound difference between Barack Obama and President Kennedy:
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK, observing that "victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan," hewed to the reality that the buck stops at the president's desk when he properly used the first person pronoun to say, "I'm the responsible officer of the government."
In fact, twenty-six years later, with respect to Iran-Contra, President Reagan revealed the same kind of stand-up honesty when he told the nation, "I take full responsibility. . .I'm still the one who must answer to the American people. . ."
In contrast, Obama has accepted no responsibility for the astonishing negligence that allowed the attacks in North Africa to succeed.
Instead, he directed his attack dogs to join the slobbering curs of the media in twisting the Middle East conversation so that it comes out a failure for his opponent in the presidential race, a politically expedient attempt to transfer blame that is as contemptible as it is disgusting.
But that's how it is with leaders afflicted by the messianic complex: They can never bring themselves to take responsibility for any mistake.
No political observer has better illustrated that truth than the NYT's Maureen Dowd, who, in an admirable instance of separating herself from the media's fawning slobberers, points out that in his acceptance speech in Charlotte, Barack Obama appeared to have experienced an epiphany about his egotism:
"The election [of 2008] wasn't about me. . . It was about you. . . you were the change."
However, as Dowd insightfully observes, the clever pronoun switch actually represents a calculated attempt by the president to slough economic failure off himself and on to the public, an act, given economic reality, every open-minded person will perceive as nothing more than an egregiously insulting con job.
Nor does the insult stop there; for as Dowd puts it, in asking us to reelect him, Obama is "kindly agreeing" to give us four more years of his time to help us set our economic mistakes right.
Can we imagine JFK or Ronald Reagan weaseling out of taking responsibility with such a contemptible ploy?
No, Barack Obama is no JFK. He is no Reagan. Neither is he Abe Lincoln, with whom he so often associates himself.
But he is a president afflicted by an incorrigible self-obsession that ought to impel every American to some very serious thinking before heading to the polls.
© A.J. DiCintio
September 22, 2012
If you're like me, you may well have reacted to last week's murderous attacks by shouting something like the following, intoning the word "this" and the names of two nations with special sarcastic force:
"With all the trust and money we send to Washington, this is how the administration protects our embassies and consulates in countries such as Egypt and Libya!"
Of course, it's a sad truth we've shouted the same kind of exclamation far too many times.
And it's all the more sad and disturbing we were forced to scream its most recent iteration not just in a post 9/11 world but a world in which the acid rains of an oxymoronic "Arab Spring" have permitted mad, misogynistic theocrats and their terrorist brethren to flourish in the national soil.
However, while we may be angry, we shouldn't be surprised that U.S. centers in Cairo and Benghazi were protected as if they were in Ottawa or Osaka, given that President Obama's attitude regarding a fundamental principle of foreign policy is directly opposed to the one traditionally held by the American people and their presidents.
Here is that principle expressed eloquently by President John F. Kennedy:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Pay any price to defend the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people. . .
Sounds like the kind of rhetoric leaders of today's Democratic Party, together with their true-believing media sycophants, denounce as dangerous "Don't Tread on Me" Tea Party extremism.
Of course, it's anything but extreme because the substance of Kennedy's words comports with the ideas and examples the Founders bequeathed to the nation and which were evident in the leadership exhibited by presidents as politically diverse as TR, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan.
In contrast, Barack Obama's foreign policy vision (like his social and economic philosophy) represents a composite of dangerously soft-minded leftist idealism and a just-as-dangerous belief in his pridefully perceived messianic powers.
Regarding the latter, candidate Obama publicly revealed the reality of his perverse love affair with the first person singular pronoun as early as November, 2007, when, in an interview with New Hampshire Public radio (breitbart.com), he began a response to a question about how his "background and experience" will help "repair [America's] negative image in the world" with this stunning example of egotism:
"I truly believe that the day I'm inaugurated not only does the country look at itself differently but the world looks at America differently."
He continued with the following example:
"If I'm reaching out to the Muslim world, they understand that I've lived in a Muslim country . . . and that I understand their point of view."
He then concluded by characterizing that torrent of I's as "powerful tools."
In truth, however, it gives rise to these dangerous realities:
He ignores the fact that every fanatical Muslim committed to destroying free, open cultures with unbridled acts of terror mocks the tools he speaks of as power-less.
Moreover, he discusses America's relationship with a Muslim world plagued by profound evils not by emphasizing the need for the American people and their leaders to remain firmly committed to their nation's highest principles but by exalting himself.
No wonder, then, that after last week's atrocities, his response was to instruct his press secretary to make the morally vacuous, intellectually obscene statement that the murders were directed "not to United States policy. . . not to the American people" but merely to an internet video "offensive to Muslims."
But again, we ought not express surprise; for deep in Obama's mind, a voice surely insists upon an Arab Spring characterized entirely by green, flowering goodness, arguing, "I gave a speech in Cairo, didn't I?"
Finally, there is this profound difference between Barack Obama and President Kennedy:
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK, observing that "victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan," hewed to the reality that the buck stops at the president's desk when he properly used the first person pronoun to say, "I'm the responsible officer of the government."
In fact, twenty-six years later, with respect to Iran-Contra, President Reagan revealed the same kind of stand-up honesty when he told the nation, "I take full responsibility. . .I'm still the one who must answer to the American people. . ."
In contrast, Obama has accepted no responsibility for the astonishing negligence that allowed the attacks in North Africa to succeed.
Instead, he directed his attack dogs to join the slobbering curs of the media in twisting the Middle East conversation so that it comes out a failure for his opponent in the presidential race, a politically expedient attempt to transfer blame that is as contemptible as it is disgusting.
But that's how it is with leaders afflicted by the messianic complex: They can never bring themselves to take responsibility for any mistake.
No political observer has better illustrated that truth than the NYT's Maureen Dowd, who, in an admirable instance of separating herself from the media's fawning slobberers, points out that in his acceptance speech in Charlotte, Barack Obama appeared to have experienced an epiphany about his egotism:
"The election [of 2008] wasn't about me. . . It was about you. . . you were the change."
However, as Dowd insightfully observes, the clever pronoun switch actually represents a calculated attempt by the president to slough economic failure off himself and on to the public, an act, given economic reality, every open-minded person will perceive as nothing more than an egregiously insulting con job.
Nor does the insult stop there; for as Dowd puts it, in asking us to reelect him, Obama is "kindly agreeing" to give us four more years of his time to help us set our economic mistakes right.
Can we imagine JFK or Ronald Reagan weaseling out of taking responsibility with such a contemptible ploy?
No, Barack Obama is no JFK. He is no Reagan. Neither is he Abe Lincoln, with whom he so often associates himself.
But he is a president afflicted by an incorrigible self-obsession that ought to impel every American to some very serious thinking before heading to the polls.
© A.J. DiCintio
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
