Ww2 online tropes4/10/2023 It's one of the major priorities of my administration.īush himself was subsequently accused of "nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq, after the attacks of 9/11 caused a dramatic change in the course of his presidency. If we don't have a clear vision of the military, if we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. . . . I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. The soon-to-be president used it as a term of derision: The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. Bush during a 2000 presidential debate with then-Vice President Al Gore. The term "nation building" was popularized by George W. Here's the big one from his speech last night: "America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home." We've heard the myth of his eloquence over and over, yet he keeps "unexpectedly" making gaffes or tin-eared statements. The truth is, there's an Emperor's New Clothes aspect to Obama's supposed status as the World's Greatest Orator. Part of that cult of personality is the myth that he is the World's Greatest Orator, a myth the Times evokes with its hazy recollections of times when he was "highly persuasive." When was he highly persuasive? When he sold the public on the so-called stimulus and ObamaCare? When he campaigned for Democrats in 2010? When he rallied public support for his last change in Afghan policy, an increase in the U.S. True, Obama was persuasive enough to get elected president-but that was with a hapless opponent, a dour nepotist as his intraparty rival, a public fed up with the other party, and a media-driven cult of personality. ![]() And has he ever managed to do that? The New York Times's incoherent mishmash of an editorial on the speech tries to damn him with faint praise: "At his best, the president can be hugely persuasive." But even that praise is highly unpersuasive. To the extent that the Obama pullback makes that more likely, it puts his re-election prospects as well as the country at greater risk.Īnyway, if Obama is following popular sentiment, he certainly isn't leading it. On the other hand, that drift could easily lurch in the other direction if the situation in Afghanistan worsens, and especially if terrorists hit America again. Undeniably there is, among the general public, a general sense of war-weariness, a drift toward isolationism, which contributed to Obama's election as president. Afghanistan is not uppermost in most Americans' minds. It's possible that the president is more attuned to popular sentiment than are the generals, the activists and the commentators who are concerned with the actual merits of the policy. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to Congress today: "The President's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept." Obama didn't go nearly far enough to satisfy the isolationists who want a complete pullout yesterday, but he went far enough in their direction that Adm. To judge by the reviews we've read, last night's performance was a political failure, precisely because it was so transparently political.
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