If one insists on an 'Obama Doctrine,' what we heard tonight was as close -- given the speech's core as well as peripheral pragmatism -- as one will ever get: The pursuit and defense of our "common humanity and common security."
Does that exclude unilateral action? No.
Does it guarantee multilateral action in every instance? No.
Is Wilsonian-Carteresque humanitarianism an element? Yes.
Is liberal interventionism an element? Yes.
Or no. It depends.
And that's what I love and admire about it: The Obama Doctrine, if one so insists, is, simply put, a matter of judgment.
Bush/Cheney/NEOCON American ‘exceptionalism’ was declared dead tonight – the whole world was watching and you better believe they get it.
When he did the ‘been there, done that, 8 years, thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead, Trillion dollar debt ….’ he could not have been more blunt in how fundamentally different he is as President and CIC.
Needed to be said. He did it. Few words, crystal clear message.
From the paragraph beginning “In fact, much of the debate in Washington has put forward a false choice ….
To the one ending in “I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.” …
He dissected their foolishness with masterful intellectual surgery and laid open their willful hypocrisy.
He then did the same to the NEOCONS, and in doing so, even more thoroughly exposed the malignancy that we call the PL.
Everything the PL criticized and rightly demanded be punished with impeachment and tribunals about the reign of terror led by Bush and Cheney – the person who actually bluntly, tersely, decisively decimated as a valid American policy, is the person that same PL attacks everyday, President Obama.
So, all the hypocrites got called out. All the exceptionalists were informed that their policy is ruinous to America and he, President and CIC Obama, will have none of it.
The vast majority of Americans will get that message – loud and clear.
I assure you our military gets the difference and many if not most of them are probably resting a bit more comfortably that cowboy confrontational endangerment of their lives is not what their current CIC will ever do to them.
Posted by: Bobfr | March 28, 2011 at 10:06 PM
Missed the speech because I was working, dammit; don't have time to do more than skim the text posted online, but I'm impressed. But! I did skim around the Internet re: the speech before getting here, and at CNN came across this despicable tweet from Ed Henry:
7:40 p.m. ET - @edhenrycnn: # counting 3 teleprompters in room http://twitpic.com/4eflkf
WTF???????????????????? What a contemptible little man.
Posted by: janicket | March 29, 2011 at 02:33 AM
Diagnose the situation, then prescribe a fitting, limited solution. What Eugene Robinson and the others want is not feasible. There is no "one size fits all" solution for every situation that occurs, and imo, anyone who thinks there is is not viewing the world from a realistic POV. Events/situations are not always black and white, even those that occur in our own lives.
Posted by: majii | March 29, 2011 at 09:34 AM