This must be a difficult time for liberals, Democrats and all other flavors of Obama followers. Their hero, their icon, the man of their dreams — whose destiny it was to fulfill their dreams — has transmogrified into, dare I say it: Barack “W.” Obama.
Yes, Mr. Obama, in his Islamic State-fighting identity, is now the intellectual equivalent of not just George W. Bush, but actually — again, dare I say it — former Vice President Dick Cheney. Consider how Mr. Obama’s stance on the ISIS terrorists essentially mimics the Bush Doctrine:
1) He acknowledges this is a long war to be fought with myriad methods.
2) The stage is global.
3) The primacy is to fight this war on their turf, not ours.
4) We would prefer to fight with allies but will go it alone if we must (and per the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we may even need to use ground troops eventually).
5) We reserve the right to strike preemptively.
In all its essentials, this is the Bush Doctrine. So we have come full circle. The wages of demagoguery are to be shown to be hypocritical, and not very astutely so at that.
Remember, the Obama candidacy was premised first, last and middle on his opposition to Mr. Bush’s policies regarding the war in Iraq. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, he thoroughly trashed Hillary Rodham Clinton for her support of that war. That was the “stupid” war, for which Mr. Obama stoutly maintained he wouldn’t have voted (though it should be remembered he wasn’t in the Senate and so didn’t have to vote one way or the other — or there might have been a “present” on the roll call).
Now Barack W. Obama mimics Mr. Bush in ways large and small, and particularly regarding his justifications. It is significant not only that our strikes have been fairly widespread, but that in important ways (bombing Syrian targets and particularly the shadowy al Qaeda cell in Northwest Syria on the first night of strikes), the rationale and defense of them has been well “Bushian.”
The Obama administration has explained its every strike against [insert group here] as a strike against an “imminent danger.” This is a neat parallel of the Bush/Cheney reasoning as well as a complete abandonment of his heretofore assertion that al Qaeda had been “significantly degraded.”
To be optimistic — it is hard, but I’ll try it — let us hope this is the beginning of wisdom for our community organizer in chief. Perhaps finally he has understood his first responsibility: to safeguard this country, its allies and our interests. You don’t do that by unilateral withdrawal, ceding international leadership and issuing hollow threats.
Congratulations. To echo his wife on another occasion, for the first time ever in the conduct of his foreign policy, I’m proud of Mr. Obama and support his actions (though, in truth, there is much to criticize in the detail of its execution). His instinct to save U.S. ground troops for a last resort is also admirable, though I am skeptical that that commitment can be kept.
The truth of the matter is that we are all safer when the Islamists fear American — and Israeli — power. When that power is connected to resolve and a clear strategy, it is all the better. That being too much to hope for, I will settle for a President Obama who, at minimum, has recognized the threat from ISIS and has gone, at least partway, to move beyond the straightjacket of his campaign rhetoric to the recognition of the real burden of a superpower.
• Armstrong Williams is sole owner/manager of Howard Stirk Holdings and executive editor of American CurrentSee online magazine.
• Armstrong Williams can be reached at 125939@example.com.
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