“Here you leave Today and enter the World of Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy”
So says the plaque at the entrance to Disney World, and I suppose that’s appropriate for an amusement park where you seek a brief diversion from the troubles of the here and now real world. No such plaque is to be found on the doors of the White House. President Obama is being shown that fantasy and wishful thinking won’t keep the world from spinning, or even slow it down.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine is a harbinger of things to come. Weakness invites violence, and weakness is exactly what the Obama administration has intentionally portrayed. From the time he came to office, his positions of anti-colonialism and leading from behind have been a departure from the years of the American posture of peace through strength. His recognition that all our strength and military might had brought precious little peace to the world led him to the conclusion that we were exacerbating the problem rather than mitigating it. The “apology tour” began his term and he has systematically continued throughout his presidency to present an image of a United States less threatening to her enemies, and less reliable to her allies. This has culminated in his present intention to slash the military to pre- World War II levels. Few of us were around back then, but that was the time after World War I, the War to end all Wars (the fantasy of another progressive president), when we thought the world had changed. Europe and the US decreased their military dramatically after the war because, it seemed, the earth was a safer place. Then came Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito.
Obama’s conviction that we can unilaterally change the world by wishing it so has never shown even a glimmer of having a positive effect. The World is not a peaceful place. The level of violence, hatred, and barbarism yet pervasive in the far corners of the globe flies in the face of rhetoric about 21st century civilization. The earth remains a dangerous jungle, and even the “civilized” sections are never far from the bloodlust of our ancestors. It is hard to escape biology, and ignoring it changes nothing. Violence permeates the animal kingdom, and though we may be kings in that kingdom, we remain animals. Virtue, spirituality, morality and civilization are the fine garments we wear to mask and guard our nature, but at the core it remains… sin is ever waiting at the door.
The President’s belief that the World would love us if only we were less powerful is like the man who believes he can impress women by being soft and vulnerable. What most women want, and all the world respects, is strength and goodness; in the real world that is where you find safety. Being a force for goodness in the world requires both might and virtue. If we have sometimes been lacking in virtue, decreasing might will not increase our influence. As in the days before WW II, the well-being of the world does not benefit from those of good intent releasing it to the jackals, letting it return to the jungle from whence it came; the World needs a good and powerful United States of America.
Most of the villains of the world are an odd combination of bully and coward. Men have understood this for centuries. The best way to avoid fights is to give the appearance that you might be a really bad dude. Most guys who act tough are pretty much just acting, but if their acting is good enough nobody will bother them. It’s the bad actors that will have to prove themselves. When you act weak you will more often find yourself in conflicts, and in need of making choices that would have been made unnecessary by projecting a stronger potential threat. Teddy Roosevelt was referring to this when he quoted the West African proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” It’s not talking about the size of your stick, or having your little buddy Joe attest to it’s immensity; people need to believe that you are indeed formidable, and what the world now believes is that the President has no stick at all. He will possibly feel obliged to prove otherwise, and that’s how wars begin.
IMHO: President Obama has never really warmed up to foreign affairs. From the beginning it seemed to be his domestic agenda that was his focus, and that was where his heart was. If anything, it seemed his intent was for the US to have a smaller footprint globally. If a President can have delusions of grandeur, perhaps his was the thought that being a world leader meant being the leader of all the world, not just a part of it, and the pathway to that place might actually be a diminishing of his own country. The role of Commander in Chief has not seemed to be a good fit for the community organizer who would much prefer to be doing something else. That is unfortunate, because Commander in Chief is pretty much the most important part of his job. Most of this other stuff we can handle in other ways, but setting the tone for how we influence and guard ourselves from the rest of the world, for that we need a leader. It is like the father who hates work and would rather stay home and play with his children than earn a living. Not that playing with your kids is a bad thing, but first and foremost they need a provider and protector, not someone to keep them entertained. But like that father, President Obama is being dragged into doing his job. One can hardly blame him for disdaining the work, he’s not very good at it, and he keeps getting kicked around. He insists that this latest kerfuffle in Ukraine is not a global game of chess with the Russians. No, it’s much more than a game, but as in Syria, Putin is surely playing him. And so he continuously retreats to his progressive domestic agenda. As the proverbial man kicked around at work comes home and kicks the dog, President Obama ever returns here to kick the dog; and in this analogy we are the dog. Until now we for the most part have just absorbed the abuse, regarding his power and position as superior. Oh, maybe we barked or howled a little now and then, but not much more. Now perhaps Putin has done us a favor; maybe he has shown us something that we truly already knew in our heart of hearts; that the President is actually quite weak and impotent. When he kicks us again, surely the time has come to bare our teeth and stand our ground.
