Says Michael Doran from Harvard. (Via Michael Totten).
How did such a bunch of intelligent folks around such an intelligent president get it so wrong, so fast? You might think they're too influenced by the fantasies regularly spouted by the media, but aren't presidents supposed to have better sources? Isn't that an essential part of letting them be president?
Too many assumptions about the intelligence of Obama and his sources
ReplyDeleteObama's intelligence gets so persistently praised that by now I am wondering WHY?
ReplyDeletean article like this one about his "sibling" Jarrett and her perception of him "getting" it and without whose advice he claims to take no major decision confuses me no end
what message is this celebrity-style promoting intended to confer?
and it makes me paranoid when I read that she was born in Iran while her father worked there (doesn't say anything whether she lived there long enough to make friends and acquire those special insights I get to hear from our German Iran-experts)
... and is his most important financial advisor (doesn't say what Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner think of that)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26jarrett-t.html?hp
rgds,
Silke
When these are the people you invite as Jewish representatives, you clearly don't think very highly of the Jews.
ReplyDeletehttp://forward.com/articles/110371/
Obama must think very highly of himself to craft a mid-east policy based on the power of his own charm and correct worldview. To use an American phrase (see Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test): Obama is drinking his own kool-aid.
ReplyDeleteIt is notable that they got it wrong so quickly. An early failure could be a good thing, if you trust that Obama isn't necessarily an Israel hater.
If you think about it, this is the fundamental premise of the President's Middle East policy.
ReplyDeleteObama replied that there was no distance between the U.S. and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and that no progress was made under President George W. Bush.
While I think that there are enough differences between President Obama and President Clinton to make the comparison worthless, this view explains the mistakes that Ari Shavit mentioned in his recent article.
just for maybe future use - here Obama applies his obviously preferred tactic of evading questions he doesn't like i.e. great troubles vs nitpicking
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=8153681&page=1
by the way I was struck how in the initial press conference he empathized with Mr. Gates understandable anger but should a white cop by virtue of his skin colour deemed to be racist not have a right to be "understandably angry"? I am getting more and more worried by realizing how much the media utterances of academics seem to refer only to themselves as worthy of consideration and all others as worthy of commiseration.
Take that together with his speech at the NAACP where he mentioned only academic professions as worth to be aspired to - no plumbers no carpenters no policemen no soldiers etc etc only presumed glamour jobs.
rgds,
Silke