[nathanbedford]

We are in agreement about the facts as least as they are recognizable at the moment. You're right to direct our attention to the "why" of it. Why does Obama and his administration leave the nation vulnerable to aggressive terroristic tyrants around the world? Some of those threats, such as the threat of Islamic fascism, are mortal threats to values the left professor still hold dear, such as the rights of women, homosexuals, scientific truth etc.

Normally I would reply that a committed leftist welcomes chaos to move his agenda and this is true no less on the international scene where the defense of the nation state can be compromised, as on the domestic scene. I believe the leftist sees America not as the shining city on the hill but as the great Satan who stands in the way of transnational socialistic utopia.

So, threats to America serve at least two valuable purposes for the leftist. They weaken America and that hasten OneWorld socialist order. They create conditions of chaos which is a precondition in their philosophy for socialism to triumph. I believe the leftist is arrogant enough to assume that he is smart enough to overcome primitive, medieval, theocracy with enlightened atheism of the 21st century after the terrorists, like useful idiots domestically, have served their purpose.

I have reservations, however, about a facile application of this analysis to Obama. Not because Obama is a moderate and not a Manchurian Marxist, but because of where Obama might see himself on the ladder of power. The career of Mao Tse Tung is instructive in this regard. Until he had attained absolute power in China, he was willing to cut deals with Shang Kai-shek to appease the Americans, to betray Shang Kai-shek to the Japanese to advance his power , to kowtow or defy the Russians as opportunity offered. In all of these affairs Chiang Kai-shek was willing to sacrifice soldiers and civilians by the hundreds of thousands for the most trivial seeming motivations as long as they remotely advanced his march to power.

Once he attained power he was utterly ruthless in maintaining it and utterly indifferent to the cost in human life. Indeed, he deliberately provoked the Korean War and willingly sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers to wear down the American forces. He maintained this approach until it began to compromise his ability to obtain atomic weapons technology from Russia, whereupon, he abruptly changed policies.

My point is that the left is not reflexively pacifist. When it comes to advancing its goals it can be unbelievably bloodthirsty. When it's existence is threatened, as was the Soviet Union's in 1941, Stalin was implacable in trading Russian lives at a rate of 7 or 8 foe one to protect his dictatorship. There was not the slightest hint of pacifism there. Nor was there any shrinkage from torture or any other war crime or crime against humanity which might advance the cause. These issues are only respected by the he left when democracy, not socialism, is threatened.

To return to Obama, where does he see himself on the ladder of power? Does he believe he needs the chaos to advance his agenda? Or does he see chaos as a threat to his power which he is in the process of solidifying? I think this is the question which will answer the "why" of his foreign policy.

[andy58-in-nh]

A key to understanding Obama is to acknowledge that he is not that deep a thinker. His worldview is not as profound, albeit misguided as that of his educators.

Where others have assumed the President's penchant for cliché and indistinct language a gauge of advanced intellect, I detect the presence of superficiality. Perhaps it ought to be unsurprising that curious Americans have not been made privy to Obama's college records, lest others advance the same diagnosis and be left with uncomfortable, unanswered questions.

What Mr. Obama does possess in addition to the useful charms and low arts of popularity is an unshakable faith in his own intellect and rectitude. The proper term for such misplaced faith is "arrogance" and as you well note, he is "arrogant enough to assume that he is smart enough to overcome primitive, medieval, theocracy with enlightened atheism of the 21st century after the terrorists, like useful idiots domestically, have served their purpose."

To such men, "chaos" is a useful tool to be wielded against those who such a person views as a means to his preferred ends. In my experience, there is an inherent ruthlessness in people who view others as stepping stones toward greatness they secretly know they have not earned. Such persons are never truly concerned with where they stand in relation to others (i.e. - the "ladder of power") because they presume to dwell outside of such metaphysical constraints as "value" and "merit", but rather assume their achievement as a matter of having convinced others to follow them.

There is frequently a pathological quality to people like this: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro: all were or are far less intelligent and perceptive than they themselves believed, but each possessed an ability to motivate others and to promote a novus ordum on the strength of their personality and will.

That said, I am not prepared to place Barack Obama among the prior cast except in terms of tendency: he has not yet evinced a will to sacrifice his countrymen to his vision; whether he ultimately does depends upon the depth of his pathology and, still, upon the willingness of the yet largely free country over which he presides to allow it.