Ten Commandments for Our Next Commander-in-Chief

[Valin]

National Review:

A good rule of thumb is to look at what Obama has done, and then do the opposite.

Victor Davis Hanson

March 22, 2016

 

1. Do not deflect blame onto others. Take personal responsibility when foreign policies implode — and at least a few will. Read Churchill’s speech after the fall of Tobruk....(Snip)

 

2. Share credit for success with Congress and Allied leaders, rather than chest-thumping and spiking the ball over supposedly unilateral presidential achievements where the real work was often done by unsung military heroes or intelligence operatives.........(Snip)

 

3. Do not utter threats: no red lines, step-over lines, or deadlines. Failing to enforce an ultimatum only weakens U.S. credibility, while dutifully carrying out a loud warning becomes anticlimactic and merely dutiful....................................(Snip)

 

4. By the same token, do not publicly insult foreign leaders — whether enemies or friends. Avoid ridiculing Russian president Vladimir Putin as some sort of class cut-up, or Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an insensitive ideologue, or France’s then-president Nicolas Sarkozy as a showboater, or British prime minister David Cameron as ineffectual..........................(Snip)

 

5. Praise soft power, but put little faith in it. Until the nature of man changes, hard power will matter more than all the noble appeals to shared aspirations and similar economic and cultural interests....................(Snip)

 

6. Do not expect to make a lasting bargain, break-through treaty, or new friendship with a thug. Democratic leaders lie far less and can be trusted far more than dictators, who have misleading and cheating imprinted in their DNA................(Snip)

 

7. Do not trust periodic bursts of hysteria from politicians, celebrities, media figures, or pundits. Most members of those categories in the Boston–New York–Washington corridor have no real ideology; they simply align for a while with perceived success or distance themselves from assumed failure......................................(Snip)

 

8. Accept that some problems are for the present intractable. They won’t go away until larger geostrategic conditions change — or current leaders lose power............................(Snip)

 

9. Speak nicely of, but never rely on, the leadership of the United Nations. Its resolutions were of no value in Libya. It did nothing to stop genocide in Syria............(Snip)

 

10. Listen to Winston Churchill’s advice and never criticize or apologize for the United States while abroad. Plenty of foreigners will trash America without the president of the United States joining in the rebuke while on foreign shores........................(Snip)