Indeed, Obama spent the week telling Europeans everything they wanted to hear, but got little for it. The French and the Germans still belittled America's "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism and refused to follow our lead.Cheers are all well and good, but they still don't translate into foreign nations doing what we would like them to do. In the end, they'll still act as they perceive benefiting their interests despite the popularity of Barack Obama in their countries. And no matter how we relabel the "war on terror" or give pretty speeches on Islam and talk in mysterious ways about how Islam has helped shape our country's history, there will still be Islamicists who want to kill us. And Iran and North Korea will still pursue their nuclear ambitions.
This might lead to a painful realization for Obama. While he may think words are everything, for our enemies and even our friends, words are — still — just words.
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Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Just words won't do it
Jonah Goldberg notes all the examples of the Obama administration acting as if changes in rhetoric and symbolism will achieve what substance can't.
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President Obama
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4 comments:
And no matter how much Cheney and Bush talk about "enhanced interrogations," it will still be torture.
Of course Obama is all about words. He's never done anything but words. It's his whole life.
Your example is off the mark, Kathy, because the "enhanced interrogations" got results (e.g., thwarted attacks), and the whole tenor of Goldberg's thesis is Obama's will get him nowhere.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sawed off Daniel Pearl's head with a dull sword. Not happy with that alone, he made a snuff film to brag about it to the world. He was one of the people who was subjected to "enhanced interrogation". Since his own head is still attached to his body, I think his interrogation was not enhanced enough.
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