President Obama has had a rude awakening in the Middle East. The region he thought existed was an illusion built on American progressive assumptions about the way the world works. In the dream Middle East, democracy at least of a sort was just around the corner. Moderate Islamists would engage with the democratic process, and the experience would lead them to ever more moderate behavior. If America got itself on the “right side of history,” and supported this hopeful development, both America’s values and its interests would be served. Our relationships with the peoples of the Middle East would improve as they saw Washington supporting the emergence of democracy in the region, and Al Qaeda and the other violent groups would lose influence as moderate Islamist parties guided their countries to prosperity and democracy.
This vision, sadly, has turned out to be a mirage, and Washington is discovering that fact only after the administration followed the deceptive illusion out into the deep desert. The vultures are circling now as American policy crawls forlornly over the dunes; with both the New York Times and the Washington Post running “what went wrong” obituaries for the President’s efforts in Egypt, not even the MSM can avoid the harsh truth that President Obama’s Middle East policies have collapsed into an ugly and incoherent mess.
I wonder if Mead, usually a very measured man, realizes the irony that many of the president’s opponents have impolitely (but not inaccurately) nicknamed him “Bambi.”
And then there’s this, strongly related:
What is the common denominator of his failed foreign policy initiatives (reset with Russia, a new, kinder, gentler Middle East, supposed breakthroughs with China, outreach to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela) and his domestic catastrophes (Obamacare, deficits, huge debts, or chronic unemployment)? In a nutshell, he does not seem to know much about human nature, whether in the concrete or abstract sense. Obama either never held a menial job or ran a business. In lieu of education in the school of hard knocks, he read the wrong, if any, seminal texts at all.
That’s the fundamental problem with Marxists and leftists in general, all the way back to Rousseau. They either completely misunderstand human nature (“the noble savage”) or they completely deny its existence (“the New Soviet Man”).
“What is the common denominator of his failed foreign policy initiatives… and his domestic catastrophes?”
There’s a Demotivator that points out that “the common element in all of your failed relationships… is you.”
The common denominator in all of these disasters, foreign and domestic, is Barack Obama and the leftist political philosophy he represents.
General Sisi and President Sissy Pants aren’t on the same page. They’re not even reading the same book. They’re barely in the same universe.
“Bambi vs. Godzilla” is funny in one sense, but grim as well. for real understanding of what is going on, read MIchael Ledeen at
http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2013/08/18/its-war-you-idiots/?singlepage=true
FWIW, Obama did have at least one menial job, at a Honolulu Baskin Robbins.
As it happens I sold ice cream in Honolulu as well (in my case from a bicycle cart), and I don’t recall it teaching me anything about Middle East foreign policy. It did teach me that I didn’t want to sell ice cream for a living.
“Honey, DO NOT order vanilla again! The other customers get pissed off at the twenty minute lecture.”
“As it happens I sold ice cream in Honolulu as well (in my case from a bicycle cart), and I don’t recall it teaching me anything about Middle East foreign policy.”
Clearly you weren’t paying attention.
You still aren’t:
Learning about human nature teaches you about all humans. Including ones from the ME.
Well that would explain a lot.
Ice cream über alles
As it happens I sold ice cream in Honolulu as well (in my case from a bicycle cart), and I don’t recall it teaching me anything about Middle East foreign policy.
But then again, you’ve never shown much ability to learn from observation of or communication with others. Selling ice cream for example, would have educated the observant person about conflicts of interest. But your posts on Transterrestrial have demonstrated frequently your continued inability to grasp that concept.
“As it happens I sold ice cream in Honolulu as well (in my case from a bicycle cart), and I don’t recall it teaching me anything about Middle East foreign policy.”
The above, ladies and gentleman, is an exquisitely perfect window into the liberal/statist/autocratic mind. This one sentence illustrates so much about liberal/statist world view:
“The experience didn’t teach me anything so therefore it’s valueless for teaching anyone, anything.”
Even though the liberal is too stupid to see a lesson that others clearly see and understand, it never occurs to the liberal that *they* might have missed something. No no no – the liberal didn’t see it so the liberal concludes there was nothing to be seen.
And since the liberal saw nothing, and since the liberal is always right and perfect, those who did see something are delusional.
Notice how this viewpoint smoothy and effortlessly translates to group-think. No where is there the slightest pause for a thought that suggests that people can see things differently….and/or see things the liberal may have missed. No, the liberal mind skitters across the surface of the proposition like a flat stone skipping over a deep deep pond.
We did not hear something like:
“Hmm well when I sold ice cream I didn’t see how that experience could translate into understanding of the M.E. I may have missed something.”
There is no recognition that things aren’t always as the Statist Thug sees them. No recognition that within little things can lie a universe of thought.
Never the briefest of moments where the liberal pauses and reflects that they may not, in fact, know everything and that a non-liberal might have a point.
Stalinists, Maoists, Statist Thugs all desire group-think. Love group-think. Need and depend upon group-think.
Note also there’s no recognition of the continuum of human experience. Nothing that could be learned selling ice cream to humans could *possibly* be relevant in dealing with other humans in other venues. The liberal world is broken and compartmentalized into little bits and pieces which the liberal thinks is self contained and unsullied and un-muddied by other aspects or compartments of life.
There’s selling ice cream.
And there’s dealing with the M.E.
And one has nothing to say about the other.
In this way, the liberal negates the past and disconnects the future. The liberal thinks one set of rules works here and nothing about those rules are relevant over there. Once you disconnect past, present and future, you are free to ignore consequences. You no longer accept or worry or even consider the fact that some stupid law you want to create (like Obamacare) could cause reactions you don’t like. You can ignore possible, knowable consequences ( like: if people don’t like something they will find a way to avoid it or thwart it) and make up any old stupid regulation you want because you’ve failed to learn something when you sold ice cream.
For all their pony-tailed, bearded, bespeckled, bow-tied, bum-kissing birkenstocked, bloviating about Zen and Koans and meditation, and tolerance and understanding of other’s thoughts…the liberal totally misses the point about the universe being contained in a speck of sand.
And so to the liberal, there’s nothing whatever to be learned about humans while selling ice cream to them, that could possibly be applied anywhere else.
Nice post, Gregg. It might be wasted on its intended target, but other people will get it.
Two of Obama’s failures:
1. Assuming that people who cry for freedom want freedom for more than just themselves.
2. Failing to comprehend that almost all of the anti-American hostility exhibited by foreign governments is inherent in their relative brands of tyranny. They hate us because we have a history of objecting to those sorts of tyranny and raising a fuss about it.
The lack of condemnation in the press over these foreign policy failures has been disturbing. Only a few short weeks ago the US was on track to deliver, as a gift, 16 F-16 fighters and 200 Abrams tanks. To a government which has now fallen under a military coup and today massacres hundreds of civilians in the streets as a matter of course. This is one of the most monumental policy failures since the end of the Cold War and the press has barely dipped its feet into it.