Even the member of the team who's supposed to give the rest of them muscular cover shows a proclivity for airy aims. General Scott Gration flew 274 missions as fighter pilot in the First Gulf War. As a veteran of 32 years of service in the Air Force, Gration, according to Newsweek, is the guy "who lends gravitas to Obama."
But even Gration aims so high as to separate himself from reality. Newsweek quotes him as saying, "I believe if you could get rid of all the nuclear weapons this would be a wonderful world." True enough. And if unicorns could gather peacefully beneath a setting sun each night, the world would be a better place. Of course, there's nothing wrong with Gration's sentiment. But coming from the guy who's supposed to provide a dash of blood and steel to Obama's foreign policy prescriptions, it's a jolting dalliance with an unattainable fantasy world.
SO WHAT KIND of Doctrine have the Doctrinaires produced? Not surprisingly, one jammed with high-minded goals but an aversion to taking on the intellectual or physical challenges necessary to achieve them. Given the stark disparity between their expressed goals and the Doctrinaires' reluctance to act, the Obama Doctrine is predictably overflowing with internal contradictions and sweeping flowery assertions that ignore uncomfortable facts on the ground.
The most prominent of these internal contradictions comes when Ackerman assures the reader, "An inextricable part of [the] doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of al-Qaeda." This apparent sop to simplistic swing voters is probably
meant to reassure them that Obama can be tough when necessary. Team Obama probably hopes the fact that Obama's "thorough destruction" of al Qaeda will ignore Iraq, where al Qaeda operates its largest franchise and Obama has promised a total retreat, will escape the voters' notice.
But the disingenuousness isn't nearly as disquieting as the idealized version of the world that Obama and his minions apparently have adopted. Near the end of the piece, Ackerman crystallizes the thinking. "Why not pursue the enlightened global leadership promised by liberal internationalism?" Ackerman asks. "Why not abandon fear? What is it we have to fear, exactly?" Predictably, Power looks back 75 years to make the same point. "Obama goes back to Roosevelt. Freedom from fear and freedom from want. What if we actually offered that?"
As is often the case, lost in the clichéd invocation of Franklin Roosevelt is that there actually was much to fear back in the 1930's. Nazism and totalitarianism, then in their nascent stages, would combine to take tens of millions of innocent lives. If America had been appropriately respectful and, yes, fearful of these threats, the butcher's bill would have been less ghastly.
To answer the question of what we have to fear today, perhaps Team Obama could talk to Theo van Gogh. Oh never mind--he's dead. Maybe they could ask Hirsan Ali, who has millions of people who would like to make her dead, too. If they're of a mind to, they could begin a dialogue with the gay community in the Netherlands or the rocket-dodging population in Israel. They would likely find that people are fearful for a reason.
Honestly grappling with the very real perils of our era would mean putting the airy idealism and hollow rhetoric on hold. The Obama Doctrine shows that Barack Obama and his Doctrinaires have no intention of doing any such thing. Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
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