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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Obama Doctrine Is to Not Have a Doctrine
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/05/obama-doctrine-not-have-doctrineThe Obama Doctrine Is to Not Have a Doctrine
By Kevin Drum
| Fri May 30, 2014 2:42 PM EDT
Fareed Zakaria takes on the cult of foreign policy toughnessfar too common even among centrists and some liberalsthat instinctively equates military force with decisiveness and everything else with hesitancy and weakness:
Maybe thats the Obama Doctrine.
Please spare me from more doctrines. But Zakaria is basically saying that the Obama Doctrine is not to let yourself get seduced by the straitjacket of doctrines. I guess that's a doctrine I can live with.
You know, the one time I felt a little sorry for Sarah Palin was when she got so much grief for not knowing the Bush Doctrine. Hell, I didn't know it either. You're either with us or against us? Bring 'em on? We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud? The truth is that I still couldn't tell you. Nor could I really tell you about the Carter Doctrine or the Reagan Doctrine or any other doctrine more recent than the Monroe Doctrine. They never really meant all that much, did they? Every president has an underlying worldview, and that's about all we can expect. I think Obama has articulated his as well as anyone has.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The articulation got lost in translation from candidate to Oval Office...
slingsam
(370 posts)Aren't doctrines destroying religions? Didn't the Bush Doctrine...whatever it was.....destroy America?
OK...OK...just my last righteous rant for the day.
Blue Owl
(49,913 posts)n/t
mopinko
(69,806 posts)i call that a win.
snot
(10,478 posts)That said, I'm deeply disappointed in Obama. Eschewing doctrines in favor of results could be great. But the results of his practice have been highly impracticable/ineffective/disastrous in certain areas. At best, he's allowed himself too often to be swayed by the 1% that their view is somehow best. E.g., the idea that we've GOT to save the banks that looted us, for example (pure cr*p; see, e.g., Wm. Blackwell). He need only have consulted those who PREDICTED the 2008 meltdown to get better advice; but he failed to do so.
Again, if his purported eschewment of doctrines had meant he opted in favor of what worked, we might be better off. Instead, it's meant he's split the baby between the 1% and other pressures.
Cha
(295,899 posts)"Mission Accomplished! "