Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Thursday, June 05, 2008 3:04:23 PM
With the economy, in particular oil prices, appearing to improve, and the so-called housing 'crisis' receding in our collective memories, foreign policy will likely re-assert itself as the primary issue concerning most Americans. That's making Senator Obama, the Democratic nominee, nervous, as well it should since significant numbers of voters correctly understand that his depth of knowledge and experience in that realm is best measured in micrometers.
Yet some observers are convinced he has the right blend of intelligence and instincts to successfully negotiate the foreign affairs minefield. Enter Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate, who heroically tries to argue that Obama's hopelessly naive assertion that speaking with the world's despots is a stroke of genius, concluding:
"I would submit there is nothing wrong with any of this...taken in full, and in the context of the question, his reply was the acme of common sense. "
Since the potency of arguments can often lie in their context, Kaplan provides transparent, if unwitting, justification for mainstream voters to be skeptical about Obama by arguing that a visit from a sitting United States president just isn't what it used to be:
"A presidential visit is not the cherished commodity that it once was, because the United States is no longer the superpower that it used to be."
He builds this trendy house of cards on the wholly specious premise that the U.S. has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq and that after the fall of the Soviet Union the nations of the world "began to go their own way, pursue their own interests, build their own alliances...without giving much thought to Washington's feelings about the matter." So, despite the fact that the U.S. produces 35 percent of the world's wealth, that the military budgets of any half a dozen nations doesn't equal ours, and that our economic global reach is both uncontested and redoubtable, Mr. Kaplan says the world effectively ignores us, that we're a back-bencher nation.
Consistent with his fellow liberals, Kaplan habitually apologizes for the Bush Administration's years of defending American values, of asserting that he won't put our interests behind any other nation's, and that although we welcome allies, if necessary, we'll protect our interests and those of our allies alone--not much different from Bill Clinton, who unilaterally launched a military campaign in Bosnia without United Nations approval. If you don't recall Kaplan becoming apoplectic over that it's because he and his leftist brethren sat quietly on the sidelines.
Kaplan finishes his agonizingly misinformed editorial with an equally obtuse assertion:
"Either way, not only was Obama's remark not naive; it reflected a more instinctive understanding of the post-Cold War world than either of his opponents seem to possess."
We're left to ponder in what way pledging to sit down with Ahmadinejad--who just yesterday said that Israel is slated for destruction--reflects an "instinctive understanding of the post-Cold War world."
The post-Cold War world Kaplan refers to is, most conspicuously, one in which asymmetrical warfare has emerged as the greatest threat, one that apparently escapes the exquisitely refined sensibilities of the modern liberal. The left's view of the world is predicated on a moral equality of all nations, myopically lumping totalitarian states in with America.
It's not only antithetical to the American exceptionalism that came to the world's aid in two world wars, it belies the reality that, in light of the scourge of radical Islam, America is truly the world's last best hope.