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Rebutting Critics, Obama Seeks Higher Bar for Military Action
NY Times ^ | 05/29/2014 | PETER BAKER

Posted on 05/29/2014 5:13:15 AM PDT by Phlap

As President Obama listens to assessments of his foreign policy these days, he grows deeply frustrated. Syria? Ukraine? Afghanistan? What more do his critics want him to do? Get into another war? Keep fighting one that has already become America’s longest?

After more than five years in office, Mr. Obama has become increasingly convinced that while the United States must play a vital role beyond its borders, it should avoid getting dragged into the quicksand of international crises that have trapped some of his predecessors. It is time for an end to what he called “a long season of war.”

To his critics, mainly on the right but also some on the left, this is a prescription for passivity, an abrogation of decades of bipartisan leadership on the world stage. Stung and irritated, Mr. Obama used his commencement address to West Point cadets on Wednesday to mount a sustained rebuttal and to define an approach to foreign policy that he believes is suited to a new era and that he hopes will outlast his presidency.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: foreignwars; interventionism; woodrowwilson
The article concludes " “He’s been in a kind of dialogue with the American people,” Mr. Kagan said, “and I think he’s concluded that they would be happy if he never used force.”

But we pay our leaders to make the tough calls we wouldn't.

1 posted on 05/29/2014 5:13:15 AM PDT by Phlap
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To: Phlap

Going forward we will only use military force when Islam is threatened.

Or insulted.

Or just wants us to beat on someone for them.


2 posted on 05/29/2014 5:19:41 AM PDT by Iron Munro (Black skin has morphed into Teflon.)
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To: Phlap

In a speech to the NY Times newsroom...


3 posted on 05/29/2014 5:19:54 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Rip it out by the roots.)
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To: Phlap
But we pay our leaders to make the tough calls we wouldn't.

Far too many of them make the "tough calls" w/o the sense or morality it takes to make them tough to make.

Obama has wasted more lives than any one else in history via his meddling to enhance terrorism and by ceding areas, taken with American blood, back to the original status. I believe he would think that, instead of deploying troops to kill bad guys, he would rather just do a study to determine how many troops might be killed in the action, bump it by 50%, then line them up in front of firing squads to expedite the process w/o harming any of the bad guys.

4 posted on 05/29/2014 5:22:47 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: Phlap

Higher bar?

Must be that his back hurts from the limbo moves he’s been making to get under the bar.


5 posted on 05/29/2014 5:24:00 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin.)
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To: Phlap
Hmm...

Like attacking Qaddafi in Libya
when we were under no imminent threat

Then permitting an act of war against
our Embassy post there, without retribution

Yup, this makes sense

6 posted on 05/29/2014 5:24:02 AM PDT by HangnJudge
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To: Phlap

This probably means we will be at war within two weeks...


7 posted on 05/29/2014 5:38:36 AM PDT by Bobalu (What cannot be programmed cannot be physics)
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To: Phlap

“and I think he’s concluded that they would be happy if he never used force.”

Yes, which is why we have to project strength, so that we don’t invite the kind of aggression which can pull us into military action.


8 posted on 05/29/2014 5:39:55 AM PDT by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: Phlap

he has some nerve Bush went to Congress, and to the UN. Obama did neither.


9 posted on 05/29/2014 5:51:15 AM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15 - 1030am - Obama's advance team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: Phlap

“What more do his critics want him to do?”

I’m sure a majority if not all would want him to resign.


10 posted on 05/29/2014 5:56:19 AM PDT by Slambat
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To: Phlap

Obama offers up a speech that bombs and the sycophants at the New York Times gladly ride to the rescue to retrieve Obama from the well. The brilliance of the man is beyond dispute, at least in the opinion of the New York Times.


11 posted on 05/29/2014 5:57:18 AM PDT by centurion316
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To: Phlap

Obummer the Pussyfist


12 posted on 05/29/2014 6:01:52 AM PDT by bunkerhill7 ("The Second Amendment has no limits on firepower"-NY State Senator Kathleen A. Marchione.")
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To: Phlap

This is ridiculous. No one has called for use of force this is a false choice put up by Obama. ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick’ is proven to work. The man is clueless or diabolical.
His legacy will be either Gross Incompetence or Deliberate Malfeasance.


13 posted on 05/29/2014 6:07:08 AM PDT by griswold3 (I was born heI're in America. I will die here in a third world country. Obama succeeded.)
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To: Phlap

Dialogue? Giving a commencement address at a military academy? That’s not a place where you can expect audience approval/disapproval like a “laugh-track” on a sitcom. They will listen politely and carefully keep their opinions to themselves for that is the way they’ve been trained.

If you want a dialogue, Obama, you went to the wrong place.


14 posted on 05/29/2014 6:28:04 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: Phlap; All

The Boehner-Funded, Obama Grand Bargain of assigning the US Military to mercilessly attack the Climate Change Weapon of Mass Destruction, was greeted by the 2014 Graduation Class at West Point with a 25 % standing ovation, IOW a future 75 % reduction in force of the newly commissioned Army Officers.

Over the years, Doormat Republican Boehner has been able to fund all of the Democrats’ Commander in Chief Obama’s Military decisions, to lead from the bottom of a Socialist, Group Hug, Hell Hole.

Speaker Boehner should indeed be in line for a promotion by Arrogant Commander in Chief Obama.

Although, over the years, Boehner has doubled the taxpayer dollars sent to the failed Veterans Administration, the rumor that a grateful, but still Arrogant, Obama is considering promoting Boehner to be in charge of the Veterans Administration has yet to be confirmed.


15 posted on 05/29/2014 7:02:56 AM PDT by Graewoulf (Democrats' Obamacare Socialist Health Insur. Tax violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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