NY Times article on speech
Didn't see much of the speech, on vacation. Need to make a few comments.
The outtakes here are right on. The President is a good man, making hard choices and changing course as necessary. His indictment of the UN for failing to act on even the most clear trespasses to international law in Syria is right on. His will to hold them and Russia accountable during this process of chemical weapons securing is right on. His claim that we cannot abdicate our role of leadership, while admitting we cannot be on perpetual war footing and need to focus on the U.S., is right on. This is difficult balance, and no batting average close to 100% is avaiable in every case.
That he admits our surveillance (NSA trespasses), Guantanamo and drone policies need improvement is an accurate and necessary criticism of himself. That takes bravery, despite pundits who choose to characterize this (from the right) as simply lack of conviction and/or cowardice or (from the left) that these were bad decisions in the first place needing to be pared significantly down long ago (which is pretty much how I feel), together both somewhat easy, monochrome, armchair second-guessing. They are enormously complicated tasks. He seems to be trying to get the balance of all these things ultimately right, and while I don't always agree 100% with him, as a whole it's hard to think of a major politician in the U. S. who I'd feel more comfortable with making these decisions for us. Thank you President Obama, and good luck getting all these things (and the things left unmentioned) back into the track of their proper and good trajectory as per that which the course of history will reveal as the right track.
Didn't see much of the speech, on vacation. Need to make a few comments.
The outtakes here are right on. The President is a good man, making hard choices and changing course as necessary. His indictment of the UN for failing to act on even the most clear trespasses to international law in Syria is right on. His will to hold them and Russia accountable during this process of chemical weapons securing is right on. His claim that we cannot abdicate our role of leadership, while admitting we cannot be on perpetual war footing and need to focus on the U.S., is right on. This is difficult balance, and no batting average close to 100% is avaiable in every case.
That he admits our surveillance (NSA trespasses), Guantanamo and drone policies need improvement is an accurate and necessary criticism of himself. That takes bravery, despite pundits who choose to characterize this (from the right) as simply lack of conviction and/or cowardice or (from the left) that these were bad decisions in the first place needing to be pared significantly down long ago (which is pretty much how I feel), together both somewhat easy, monochrome, armchair second-guessing. They are enormously complicated tasks. He seems to be trying to get the balance of all these things ultimately right, and while I don't always agree 100% with him, as a whole it's hard to think of a major politician in the U. S. who I'd feel more comfortable with making these decisions for us. Thank you President Obama, and good luck getting all these things (and the things left unmentioned) back into the track of their proper and good trajectory as per that which the course of history will reveal as the right track.
