The problem with Liberal presidents isn’t that they don’t believe in defending the country, they do. The problem is that they don’t do it very well; at least that was the case with Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton. Also, the bad guys think our Liberal Presidents are weak so they are more likely to try to push them around than they are with Conservative presidents. The most notable example is Khrushchev who thought Kennedy weak (which historians tell us he was) and pushed and pushed until Kennedy finally stood up to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A Liberal President is not likely to totally capitulate – at least it has not happened so far.
I give Obama higher marks than presidents noted above. He started out saying all the Liberal-Radical things, but when he became enmeshed in the job, he did what was necessary. Are our enemies pushing him around more than they would have Bush? Perhaps, but only a little. For example, Qhadaffi gave up his WMD plans during the time Bush was flexing his muscles, but he seemed resolved not to give up anything during the Obama administration. Still, that hasn’t gone terribly well for him, and I rather think Obama did the right thing by letting NATO deal with Qhadaffi rather than risk the expense of three fronts of war. And perhaps NATO has learned some things since their inept attempt to quell the Serbs.
Conservatives aren’t likely to fault Obama for his recent Defense Department and CIA picks. Witness this FrontPageMag article:
“With Robert Gates set to leave his post as Pentagon chief this summer, reports are circulating that President Barack Obama will soon appoint CIA Director Leon Panetta to take over as secretary of defense and Gen. David Petraeus to slide into the top spot at the CIA. Given the alternatives that Obama could have chosen—and probably would rather choose—Panetta and Petraeus are solid picks. Not only do they have proven track records and backing in Congress; they also underscore that despite all the rhetoric, Obama continues to fill key security and defense posts with people who understand the country is at war.
“A little history is in order. It pays to recall that as a candidate and in the early months of his presidency, Obama rejected the Bush administration’s characterization of America being a nation at war. For example, the Obama administration made a concerted effort to expunge the “war on terrorism” phraseology from official pronouncements, ordering the executive branch to use the banal, bland and bureaucratic “overseas contingency operations” instead. In quick succession, Obama ordered the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, sped up the pullout of troops from Iraq, put a time limit on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and made entreaties to the thugs who run Iran. In the midst of this 180-degree turn, Obama’s secretary of homeland security even went so far as to use the Orwellian phrase “man-caused disasters” rather than call terrorism by its name.”
The writer of this article, Alan W. Dowd, goes on to describe the merits of Peneta and Patraeus. Unlike some conservatives who would bite off their tongues rather than say anything good about Obama, he gives Obama credit for doing the right thing. To underscore this confidence Dowd has Obama’s doing the right thing in regard to dealing with our nation’s enemies before he does it. While Panetta and Patraeus have yet to be appointed, he clearly believes the rumor saying that they will be. He believes that Obama, rather than run true to the ideals of the Leftists who helped put him in office, will do his utmost to combat our enemies both militarily and covertly.
This doesn’t mean Obama is giving up his Liberal domestic agenda, and note the advertisement adjacent to the subject article on the first page “Find out More. Help us stop Obama’s Radical transformation of America. Find out more. Subscribe to FrontPageMag.”
I noticed that Fox News reported the same information, but managed it without the “little history” Dowd provides: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/28/obama-prepares-announce-new-national-security-team/
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