| Forum Home | | Log in | | Signup | | My Page  | |
Rules | | FAQ | | Boards | | Members | | Search |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The above list shows replies to the following message: |
|
Msg. 56271 of 65535 |
|
The Offer!
In point of fact, Barack Obama has been on a roll when it comes to foreign affairs lately. His biggest recent achievement has been to avoid the use of American force when it comes to Syria when he and Russian president Vladimir Putin worked out a deal to get Syria to relinquish control of its chemical weapons stockpile. Many remember that the president went against his advisors when he decided to bring the Syrian mess to a vote before congress which made him look bad, for a while at least, in front of these same pundits who also wrote derogatory pieces about him at that time. Public opinion means something in this nation and there are those who are skillful at manipulating at least some if it for their own often suspect ends. New public opinion polls show the presidents handling of foreign affairs down into the high thirties. These same polls show the republican party in the mid thirties for their handling of everything over all. In point of fact, for the first time Obama’s disapproval ratings outpace his approval rating in this particular Bloomberg poll. But, there is that stubborn forty seven percent who do approve of what the president is doing with his job. It may be the same forty seven percent that Mitt Romney claimed would support the president no matter what he did uttered in the last campaign. More likely, it is as big a fiction as what Romney came up with however. Barack Obama is using his political capital wisely these days as he navigates through the mine field of Republican opposition to everything from Obamacare to immigration to gun control and the Lord only knows what else is being thrown at him. Presidents go through a time when they must suffer through low poll numbers but if they have a long range plan things usually work out satisfactorily for them in the end. Avoiding war like actions is never a bad thing and Obama, in regard to the Iranians, has stated that he will proceed with the diplomatic route even though he realizes that the chances of it succeeding are remote indeed. The snub by the Iranian president is a minor footnote to history over the long haul and may simply reflect that the president was willing to accept the risk of it in an attempt to both let the Iranians and the world at large know that he was willing to take the risk. The United States and the world at large are still fighting against and suffering from the adventures of George W. Bush who only regarded diplomacy as an unwelcome exercise on his way to another wartime experience. This nation is tired of war. It is tired of burying its dead in places like Arlington National Cemetery or a host of other venues where the Westboro Baptist Church often comes to protest. So, while the nation may temporarily dislike what the president is about or his style of doing what he does, they have shown overwhelmingly through many polls that they are opposed to any more wars. There is another minefield that still lurks out there and that is the Iranian push for nuclear weapons. That desire and push has not subsided and this nation may have to do something about it in a military way before all is said and done. Iran is the seed wart for much of the terrorism that goes on throughout the world and is also the model for radical theocratic regimes that preach their religious hate for all of the world to see. When we look at the greatest dangers in the Middle East, they all revolve around the possibility of Iranian influence spreading even further and infecting places like Iraq and Egypt and Syrian itself. In the past, the radical religious factions in the Middle East fought jihads against what they felt were corruptive outside influences and the same thing is going on today, only on a much larger potential scale. We just commemorated the attacks on the twin towers that occurred just a dozen years ago and we spend ungodly amounts of money trying to prevent anything like that from happening again. No one can argue that diplomacy is a much cheaper route to follow that acts of war. The diplomats are always there and about and they are always trying to promote what their leaders back at home want them to promote. In the case of the United States that promotion is world peace. But we have no illusions that the neocons are still also about promoting another supposedly “just” war and that they are not going to go away. Barack Obama is looking at the long view that history will write about him and the naysayer’s who state that he was unprepared for the presidency back in 2009 had best ask themselves what kind of world we might have had if someone like his opponent John McCain had secured the White House. It is almost certain that we would have been in another war in Libya and possibly in Syria and in Iran. But, that is the world of what might have been and we are very comfortable with the world that Barack Obama has carried us into as we move ever forward into this new and expanding century. And we think that long term history will look very favorably on Mr. Obama for much of what he has done. Barack Obama looks often at his fellow Illinois president Abraham Lincoln and history shows that Mr. Lincoln was very unpopular through so much of his presidency and faced critics just as unseemly as those that this current leader has had to endure. But the long pull of history is upon Mr. Obama and we think that we will all be the better for it in the end.
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Webpage Design Copyright 2003-2011 http://www.atomicbobs.com/
|