Obama's Stab At Churchillian Rhetoric

"At least I didn't fuck up as bad as Bush - at least not yet."

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -– more profoundly -– our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are,” Obama said. “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Presidents routinely frustrate grand strategists looking for point-by-point adherence to a clear philosophy. Neither Obama or his foreign policy team ever promised that this speech would be about anything more than the intervention in Libya. And there is a case to be made that in a 21st-century world, complexity trumps grand strategic precepts.

And on the use of force in Libya, while he once again skirted the issue of how an endgame can be reached and what it would look like, on many points Obama was crystal clear: this isn’t Iraq; U.S. forces won’t be used to topple Qadhafi and he wants American involvement to end as soon as possible.

It's interesting to read that America suddenly has a responsibility in the world again. Not so long ago, Obama dismissed such a notion as "arrogance."

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52107.html#ixzz1HzU1KtOR