Poor, Poor Obama: The World Is Just Too Complicated

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

September 28, 2014

 

 

What, did Thomas Friedman run out of taxi drivers or pink-haired hipsters to help him with today’s column? Today’s Friedman thumb-sucker, “Who Had It Easier—Reagan or Obama?”, he offers up one of the most ironic and tired out tropes of liberalism—that the Cold War era was so much less complicated than today because it was a binary conflict between two otherwise rational superpowers. Hate to break this to Friedman, but other liberals were using this line ten years ago.

 

 

In several critical areas, Reagan had a much easier world to lead in than Obama does now. . .

 

Here’s how: The defining struggle in Reagan’s day was the Cold War, and the defining feature of the Cold War was that it was a war between two different systems of order: Communism versus democratic capitalism. But both systems competed to build order — to reinforce weak states around the world with military and economic aid and win their support in the Cold War. . .

 

This isn’t what the New York Times, or nearly all of Friedman’s predecessors on the Times’ op-ed page (not to mention nearly all of the academic Sovietologists and arms controllers dug in like ticks at the State Department), said back in the 1980s. Then, Reagan was a dangerous simpleton who didn’t understand how complex the Cold War world was. Anyway, to continue with Tom-Tom:

 

 

Obama’s world is different. It is increasingly divided by regions of order and regions of disorder, where there is no one to answer the phone, and the main competition is not between two organized superpowers but between a superpower and many superempowered angry men.

 

(Snip)

[SrWoodchuck]

Like another US Prez.....his personal statement on manifest destiny...

 

 

Via iOTW

[nickydog]

Radio Free Arabia is a good idea.

[Valin]

Radio Free Arabia is a good idea.

 

Works for me. We're fighting this war with one hand tired behind our back, blindfolded, and stand on one leg. What I mean is we are the nation that invented public relations. Madison Ave. has convinced us (and the world) to spend good money to buy bottled water! Maybe its time to use that resource.