Is Obama a marginal psychopath? Well, that of course sounds like an inappropriate joke - but the jest is at least half serious given circumstances. First, he puts a deadline on Iran - this I don't get - I've assumed all along and for good reason that he's just bull shitting on Iran, there'll be no real action there etc etc - and then he goes and says they'll have ability to make a bomb within about a year and he has no intention of letting that happen - what the fuck? He's essentially locked himself into actually doing something or otherwise looking like a shameless liar - for sure I've always believed he was a shameless liar, but he'd always given himself a rhetorical out to cover up the fact he was lying so it all made sense in an absurd, amoral sort of way - but now he's basically set a deadline, hoofed into the sand - and yet I still have no confidence whatsoever that he actually means it - so what the hell is going on here? A complete change of heart? He has absolutely no clue what he's doing and is making it up as he goes along? Or he just feels there's no lie so big that he can't get away with telling it?
And then he goes to Israel today and for all intents and purposes gives a pro Zion speech that completely reverses the tenor of his much reviled [if you're a conservative] or much revered [if you're an idiot/liberal] Cairo speech of four years ago - I mean, what does one make of that? He's a psychopath and feels there's no lie he can't get away with? He's had a sincere change of heart? Or he has no clue and is just filling in the blanks as best he can?
Very disturbing. Gives weight to op-ed in WSJ today that makes case that Obama's foreign policy has created an incoherent mess that will eventually amount to an invitation to aggression. At the moment I can't make sense of what the man is up to. Maybe there are subtleties here that I'm flat out missing.
Also reminds me of a piece I read on how some Russian strategists are convinced that American actions under Bush and Obama must be motivated by some devilishly cunning plot to sow a kind of disorder that eventually accrues to the benefit of the Great Satan - apparently they believe this because they find the alternative explanation so utterly unbelievable, ie that the most powerful country in the world is being run by fools.
