Obama's War Speech and what he Didn't Say

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/obama-didnt-say

This really seems to me like grasping at straws. A week ago already, the French news was announcing that at least ten different countries would be working together to get rid of ISIS, that the initiative came from Obama, and that France's President Hollande had already committed France to being part of it. (Though I'm sure if you're looking for reasons to criticize Obama, you could point out that the commitment of a president with a 13% approval rating doesn't actually count for all that much...)

Just because Obama didn't say in his speech that he had been negotiating with other countries for a while doesn't mean he wasn't doing it, or that it wasn't public knowledge. This author, it seems to me, is simply suffering from ODS.

And I say that as someone who is known to be anything but an Obama supporter and who, furthermore, has some reservations about this whole operation. But the supposed failure to "build a coalition" to attack ISIS is either deliberate misinformation or a woefully uninformed writer. Neither of those is excusable for someone who is pretending to pontificate on the news.

Yeah, Obama's going into this with some solid international support. That doesn't make me like the idea any more, though. I'm tired of seeing us go to war. I sure as hell wish that peace train Cat Stevens was talking about would show up.

I think Cat Stevens (now convert Yusef Islam) switched from Peace Train to Crazy Train when he called for the death of author Salman Rushdie for insulting Islam.

Having read Rushdie's Midnight's Children, I'm inclined to agree with the fatwa against him. He's like a boring Kurt Vonnegut. Why he gets as much praise as he does, I'll never understand.

We were musing at work that maybe this will get us some new DoD contracts, and stave off next year's rumored layoffs.
Looking for that silver lining.

That said, even I'm sick of being at war in the middle east.

I agree with your assessment of his literary worth. But the joke is in bad taste.

With police protection, Rushdie escaped direct physical harm, but others associated with his book have suffered violent attacks. Hitoshi Igarashi, his Japanese translator, was stabbed to death on 11 July 1991. Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing in Milan on 3 July 1991.[14] William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, was shot three times in an attempted assassination in Oslo in October 1993, but survived. Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre on 2 July 1993 in Sivas, Turkey, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people.[15]

I'm a big Cat Stevens fan. I'm sad his genius for music was subdued for Islam. And I didn't know that bit about Rushdie. It seems he made matters worse by trying to make it seem he didn't say it after the fact. Almost makes me want to erase his MP3s. Almost.

Interesting - it looks like Cat/Yusuf might have been pissed at Rushdie because many people believe that one of the characters in The Satanic Verses is based on him.

Obama, September 4: "I don't want to put the cart before the horse," Obama told reporters during a White House news briefing. "We don't have a strategy yet."
One week later: I know many Americans are concerned about these threats. Tonight, I want you to know that the United States of America is meeting them with strength and resolve.

Obama, September 4: The idea that the United States or any outside power would perpetually defeat ISIS ... is unrealistic.
One week later: Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy.

No wonder no one watches this guy's speeches. He's about as genuine as Joan Rivers' face.

Let the rest of the world handle it for once....they sure have sat on the sidelines enough times while we took care of business.

Filthy muzzies blew it up and beheaded the conductor.

I wish folks would remember Samwise's words at the end of Two Towers - "Because Mr. Frodo, there's some good left in this world, and it's worth fightin' for."

That's the problem with peace hippies. Unwilling to fight, and kill, to achieve the lasting peace they crave. Remember Sloane's words to Bashir? To paraphrase, "the galaxy needs men like you Doctor, but it also needs men like me to ensure that men like you stay alive."

*Zaps Obama with a truth ray*

Obama- I'm sorry! The weapons dealers were going to kill my kids!!! Even the secret service is scared of them!!

Let's send ISIL to Dickynoo's house, I'm sure they'll appreciate his off-beat sense of humor and they can all share hot mugs of cocoa while he reads them choice selections from his blog. Praise Allah.

Not the biggest Hunter S. Thompson fan, but stopped clock and all that, what the man had to say on 9/12/2001:

Thought about posting this in the 13 Years thread or Federal Farmer's OMG, teh WW III!!!! thread, but a better perspective here.

Funny how many of the Everything a Politician Says Is a Lie crowd get so hung up on the words when it suits them.

And so, in Garamet's world, nobody should have been held accountable for the 9/11 massacre. At the basis of her ambivalence is essentially what Ward Churchill argued most ineptly at the time - that those people deserved to die as retribution for all of America's past sins as perceived by leftist anarchists & marxists.

Is there anything you say that ISN't a strawman?

Have you confused me with Hunter S. Thompson? Tell us again how you don't use drugs.

Diane Foley clearly wasn't impressed by Obama's speech.

http://us.cnn.com/2014/09/11/us/james-foley-mother/index.html

I guess obamas speech wasn't going to head off any of ms foley's criticism.

Have to say I agree with the original article. Obama's policy might be sound, I'm really unsure. But his descriptions of his policies is all over the place, and shows extreme disrespect for his audience.

Aw man, that sucks.
I knew he had converted to Islam, but I didn't know he was choosing crazy Islam. *sigh*

She has my sympathies, but what she wanted would only have encouraged more kidnappings. He chose the risks for his own reasons.

You forgot that Rushdie has PTSD because of being in hiding, his wife left him, and his kids hate him.

"Poor taste" would have been sending him a postcard saying, "I just finished Midnight's Children, you really should get out more." when he was in hiding, like I was tempted to do.

Did you differentiate your opinion from his in any appreciable fashion?

Hint - the answer to that question is "no."

You seem to suffer from a real intellectual deficiency. Instead of embarrassing yourself in the RR, perhaps the Bronie forum would be more appropriate for someone with your kind of developmental challenges.

It's like the Discouragement feature fight, only about terrorists!

shocking

If he said it, then it has some bearing on what's going through his mind. It has some effect on how people -- those who believe him all the way through those who don't -- will perceive the issue. It's perfectly possible for a lie to be close to the truth even if it's got some fudging or spin-doctoring in it. And of course, there's the question of what the President intends to accomplish with any given speech. With all those considerations, why shouldn't one analyze the POTUS's words, even if one assumes they're all untruthful?

His opinion that 9/11 would end up in Dubya attacking Iraq seems to have panned out. Why would anyone but Dayton dispute that?

Good point, except that those afflicted with ODS just need to see him step up to the podium to start hearing the music from Psycho in their heads.

The wording of the speech was...careful. I'll give you that. The thing is, we the people never know what's going on through back channels and, with this actual "coalition of the willing," if you will, it seems to me there are cultural minefields to be avoided and unexplored options to be discussed at a later time, if necessary.

To an audience that needs pumped up language like "Smoke 'em out!" this isn't going to make a lot of sense. The one-size-fits-all American Way of Global Governance hasn't really worked all that well in the past hundred years. Time for a more nuanced model, IMO.

Yep. Sometimes bravado gets the job done, and sometimes subtlety and behind-the-scenes dealing is the way to go. But there's a portion of the American electorate that demands chest-thumping, macho posturing, and lines that sound like they came from a Clint Eastwood movie, and refuses to believe that anything else is acceptable.