1/15/2010

Attempted Murder Of A Theory

I don't think Obama should be our President. And he's turned out even worse than I expected. It was a big mistake to elect him, I can only hope it doesn't end up a fatal mistake. Obama is getting a much needed whipping from Republicans. The President has to wrap his head around the concept of strict liability on terrorism. If they hit us, he's french toast.

But in the rush to punish Obama, Republicans are serving up a fair amount of counter-productive bullshit. I see shallowness and huge logic gaps in their opportunism:

All he managed to blow up was a worldview.

Rich Lowery writes in "Death of a Theory" that the Christmas Day attack violently disproves--i.e., kills--the Obama Doctrine (if that's what it's called) of outreach to the Muslim World as a counter-terrorism strategy. But how can Lowery miss the obvious -- that disrupting the Obama peace initiative was the intended purpose of the attack? It was not the death of the Obama Doctrine, it was the attempted murder of the Obama Doctrine.

Which is standard operating procedure. Lowery's own guy, Bush, had a long-term strategy to transform Radical Islam by spreading democracy, starting with regime change in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi (al-Qaeda in Iraq) attacked Muslims in Iraq to disrupt and destroy Bush's goal of building a stable government. So:

(1) How does Lowery miss the plainly obvious parallel between Zarqawi's attack on Bush's democratic strategy and al-Qaeda in Arab Peninsula's attack on Obama's diplomacy?

(2) How does the Christmas attack disprove Obama's outreach theory any more than it disproves Bush's democracy theory? Neither has miraculously ended the war.

(3) Why is Lowery so eager to dance on al-Qaeda's string by responding to their provocations exactly as they intend?

(4) Why does Lowery grant a single brainwashed suicide bomber the power to destroy an entire worldview?

(5) Lowery confuses "operating theory of terrorism" with Obama's propaganda campaign against al-Qaeda. Why is Lowery so ready to surrender the propaganda war?

(6) How is it even sane to surrender future generations of Muslim hearts and minds to Radical Islam, make no effort to counter their malevolent belief system, and resign ourselves to endless war, or a war that will only end after a genocidal exchange of WMDs?

The biggest problem I see with Obama's initiative is that Obama doesn't have the hawkish record to alleviate domestic fears about his naivete, weakness and his commitment to U.S. national interests. It's the "Only Nixon Could Go To China" paradox. Just check the facts: the biggest peacemakers in recent American history have been uber-hawks: Ike (Korea). Nixon (China, detente, Viet Nam). Reagan (Soviet Union). And obviously, Jimmy Carter was straddled by uber-hawks Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David.

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