Posted on 08/22/2014 10:27:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Bad actors around the globe keep getting confused about the calendar, and it falls to the Obama administration to set them straight. The Russians, Secretary of State John Kerry protested back in March, have forgotten what century we're living in: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext." Kerry was echoing President Obama's observation that by seizing Crimea, Russian president Putin was putting himself "on the wrong side of history."
It's a theme this president sounded in his first inaugural address, warning that "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" are "on the wrong side of history." He returned to it in his remarks (bracketed by golf outings) about the horrific murder of James Foley. After describing just how barbaric the ISIL terrorists are, Obama offered the following complacent analysis: "And people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy and the world is shaped ... by the overwhelming majority of humanity who are appalled by those who killed [Foley] ... One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century."
That would be nice, but it's fatuous. "History" is not an actor with a point of view and a direction. You cannot be on its "wrong" side. Progressives tend to believe that the world is evolving, through some unseen but inexorable force, toward greater peace, equality, prosperity and justice. The great task for a leader of the United States, Obama appears to believe, is to get out of history's way. That's why it's a good idea to reduce our army to its smallest size since 1940, and to reduce the Marines by 8 percent. According to the American Thinker, the Army chief of staff recently testified that due to cutbacks in training funds, 75 percent of our forces are not combat ready. Apparently that's OK, because according to the words of Martin Luther King Jr., which Obama had embroidered into the Oval Office rug, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
James Foley's family might not agree. Nor would the Yazidis, or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians murdered by gas and artillery and barrel bombs, or the 100,000 Bosnians and others killed in the heart of Europe in the late 20th century, or the 1 million Rwandans killed in 1994, or the roughly 2 million Cambodians massacred between 1975 and 1979. History, in all cases, looked on impassively.
In Obama's telling, history is making American might unnecessary because the "tide of war is receding." Others believe that wars are won or lost. They don't ebb and flow like oceans.
Sadly for the president and the country he leads, his own over-eagerness to disengage from global responsibilities and to back away from military commitments has stimulated just the sort of forces he describes as retrograde.
In his Martha's Vineyard remarks, the president said, "Let's be clear about ISIL" and itemized some of its depredations including torture, rape and slavery. He might have added crucifixions and beheadings. He might also have admitted that despite his boasts that "core al-Qaida" has been decimated, ISIL is al-Qaida reborn.
Yet, aside from an air campaign (which is good as far it goes), the president again seems ready to permit a benevolent history to manage events. "Governments and peoples across the Middle East" will unite to "extract this cancer," he predicted.
That has never been true. When have the nations of the Middle East ever joined forces against an evil government or movement? Even the Europeans proved utterly feckless at intervening in the Bosnian genocide. Only with American leadership did the killing come to an end.
The peace of the post-World War II world was kept, to the degree it was, by American arms and American world leadership. Obama's abandonment of an American role in Iraq left the space into which ISIL has moved. Only American leadership and engagement can defeat ISIL. But that will require vigorous presidential leadership, not wan invocations of history's trajectory.
Anthony Pellicano style.
Am slightly ashamed to admit to a certain degree of schadenfreude.
For 40 years I’ve listened to people blaming the US for every bad thing that happens in the world. We’re blamed for not stopping bad things quickly enough, and then we’re blamed for the negative side effects that inevitably occur when we do take action to try to stop bad things.
So here you go, world. This is what you said you wanted, a US that doesn’t interfere in other country’s affairs. I hope you enjoy it.
Power, like Nature, abhors a vacuum. If you 'disengage' from the world powers stage, then someone or something will gladly fill it. Putin, ISIS, China, come to mind.......................
It doesn't bend towards justice. It bends towards judgment.
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” - Barack Hussein Obama I - September 25, 2012
Obama and ‘History’.
For history’s sake, the Obama regime is an amalgamation of Mussolini, Mao, Stalin and Hitler all rolled into a Che Guevera wrapper, smoking the entire nation they intend to destroy from inside-out.
If you've studied Hegel, from whom all progressives flow, you are convinced that history is the result of the perpetual evolution of the universe towards its ideal, which is to become a mirror image of (the impersonal) God. The constant repositioning of the dialectic is the process by which this occurs, which is exactly what the left does on a continuous basis.
And one more thing. When history gets stuck in the mud and needs a push, The (no, not Holy) Spirit brings to the fore a World-Historical Person, whose function is to kickstart history back to its correct evolutionary speed. Hegel designed this idea essentially to explain how Napoleon Bonaparte was a good guy who was going to make the world a better place, even if it took a few million dead people to do it. In later history, that would become the rationalization for Hitler, for Lenin and Stalin, for Mao, for Che. And while it hasn't been part of the political dialogue (because the average LIV wouldn't know Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel from Chuck Hagel from Idora Hegel), you know that's what the cognoscenti thought Barack Obama was, which is why his detachment and lack of success diverges so from their hopes for his "transformation" of history.
I still don’t understand why we didn’t demand that Europe handle Bosnia.
IF?
Orchestrated through king Hussein in the white hut;
Organized through the dept of InJustice, eric "boss" holder who ensures that the borders kept insecure to allow easy access.
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