Demagoguery at its best

The Pioneer ^ | 09-28-09 | Barry Rubin

[mlizzy]

Obama talks a lot, but yet to act

It is difficult to overstate the absurdity in context of President Barack Obama’s performance at the Israeli-Palestinian photo opportunity at the UN. The outstanding theme is his commandist style.

We will reverse man-made global warming, he has said. We will have a health care bill. This is like the style of an Arab dictator, proclaiming that his will is all and that uttering words make something so. It is not the style of someone helping two parties solve a problem or of a mediator.

But let’s allow William Shakespeare to explain it:

“Why, man, he stands on top of the narrow world

Like the Colossus of Rhodes, and we little men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves disgraceful graves.”

Yet this thundering, you-will-do-this style is combined with an extraordinary weakness, equally self-willed. Giving orders when you are tough is scary; giving orders when you are weak provokes derision. If America won’t use force or be tough or face confrontations or define enemies as such, then the gap between such arrogance and weakness is a chasm into which US foreign policy will fall.

This might wow them in elite salons of the United States but in lots of other countries, people have to lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from laughing.

[mlizzy]

"This might wow them in elite salons of the United States but in lots of other countries, people have to lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from laughing." --Barry Rubin

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Barry has become “The Mighty Oz.”

[equalitybeforethelaw]

But how can one do otherwise when confronted with these statements by him:

“It is past time to stop talking about starting negotiations; it is time to move forward,”

Arab-Israeli negotiations have been going on for 60 years but Mr Obama really seems to believe they have just been waiting for him to give the go-ahead signal.

Its the mesiah thing, just you wait, he will part the Red Sea any moment now. He is Uberobamaman, tall buildings, speeding bullets, and so on....and yet his people can’t spell “reset” in russian. There is just so much a super hero can do in a day.

[arthurus]

""This might wow them in elite salons of the United States but in lots of other countries, people have to lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from laughing."

And when it is apparent to even Husein al Mombasa that he has failed he will only understand that he has been knifed in the back by the treacherous right wingers and Christian fanatics. He will be more dangerous then than he is now. We will find out how the military views its Constitutional duty, I think.
as a prelude to that situation, watch what comes of the incipient conflict with McChrystal and Petraeus. If he follows Clinton's lead, he will use the firing of the generals as an occasion for purging the Armed Services of all their effective combat officers a la BJ and Tailhook.

[PGalt]

This might wow them in elite salons of the United States but in lots of other countries, people have to lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from laughing.

Lean against the wall to try to stop themselves from ROFL. In this country the rest of us see Barack as just another brick in the socialist's wall.

Very good commentary by Barry Rubin. Thanks for posting.

[the invisib1e hand]

"Willing is not desiring, striving, demanding: it is distinguished from these by the affect of commanding. There is no such thing as 'willing', but only 'willing something': one must not remove aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901, 668

Nietzsche also had some things to say about dreams and art, coincidentally.

[Ev Reeman]

Obummer’s speeches remind me of the newsreels I have seen of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and for me that is very scary indeed. Was Adolf Hitler a community organizer before he became chancellor?