Failed in effort of avoiding entirely Obama's UN speech - suckered in by opinion that speech was modest in aspirations and in essence signaled Obama unilaterally announcing the end of the American empire, rhetorically delisting it as a superpower - this in itself not surprising since modern liberalism, both as a matter of its ideological idealism and more practically as a matter of it being hard if not impossible to find financing for a huge welfare state and a great army, is certainly reflected in Obama's foreign policy thinking - still, had expected him to go grandiose - maybe the Syria debacle has taught him that clumsy use of idealist humanitarian rhetoric on the world stage can really back you into some uncomfortable corners if you're not concurrently willing to acknowledge the necessary, indispensable nature of American military power.
Maybe what we're seeing is the education of a lefty, the slowly dawning realization that what plays well at a Harvard faculty wine and cheese gab fest doesn't translate too well to the real world - or, lacking a true awakening thereof, maybe the smallness of his speech is the form his denial takes. Liberals don't study history from a military, hard power point of view, they study it from a 'victims' point of view, a 'rich white guys are evil' point of view. I think it was Eisenhower who said that a president who comes to the White House without a coherent, realistic, well formed opinion regarding the tricks and turns of foreign policy and the uses and dynamics of military power is not going to acquire such wisdom once they're there - maybe what we're seeing is Obama coming to a humbling realization of just how true that is.
Or maybe not. A central incoherence hangs over this administration - they want to embrace and indeed in many ways fundamentally define themselves in terms of a Samantha Power styled humanitarian activism and yet events are clearly demonstrating just how detached from reality that activism is - you cannot tether the US military to the enervating whims, naive wishes and entrenched chauvinisms of the UN - that is not a workable arrangement, and only people who have studied history from a point of view corrupted by the fantasies of left wing sentiment would ever imagine such a thing being possible.
And in the wake of this incoherence what we're left with is Obama, as a matter of rhetorical inference, essentially agreeing with Iran that America has been guilty of overreach and arrogance and needs to be pushed back - this is the leverage the pleasant, smiling face of Rouhani will use to bring about one of two outcomes: running out the clock with 'negotiations' until Iran either tests a bomb or convincingly demonstrates a breakout capability; or expertly manipulating 'world opinion' so that it looks like Iran is being reasonable, America unreasonable and forcing Obama into signing an accord that will have all the legitimacy of the Munich Agreement.
