Thought of the Day

Why don't we ever see the headline "psychic wins lottery?"

You Better Start Swimming

Unless you're a Bob Dylan fan, my title to this blog makes absolutely no sense. It's a reference to the song "The Times They Are A'Changin'." I mention this not to confuse my readers, but to bring them into a discussion about a paradigm shift that has occurred as a result of the changing of administrations, Bush to Obama. Since Obama has taken office, Republicans alike have spouted off hateful rhetoric accusing and depicting the Obama administration of being soft on military, willing to dialogue with rogue nations or terrorist groups hell bent on destroying the U.S. My description here isn't wildly facetious or hyperbolic either. Ask any political analyst and they'll tell you, this is exactly where republicans want to paint Obama. So, as with any other day, today I was reading the Washington Post and found Richard Cohen's article "Moralism on the Shelf" whereby Cohen posits that:

Obama's apparent willingness to divide the Taliban into awful and less awful is just the latest sign that a sterile but necessary realism has settled over American foreign policy. In recent days alone, the Obama administration has indicated that it is willing -- for the moment -- to hold its tongue regarding China's voluminous human rights abuses and has hit the "reset button" on relations with Moscow, Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist fits notwithstanding. As for Israel's insistence on expanding West Bank settlements, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced it as "unhelpful" -- a whisper of a rebuke that, in the transcript, should have been rendered in italics.

The Obama administration is talking to the Syrians. It is willing to talk to the Iranians. It will parley with the North Koreans. It has kicked the wheels off the "Axis of Evil" and has, in general, shied from the lofty language of the Bush years, especially all that stuff about wars on terrorism and spreading democracy. This is an administration to bring a lump to the throat of Brent Scowcroft, the arch realist, who has never mistaken foreign policy for missionary work, even though they both usually take place abroad.

Although Cohen goes on to say that "for the most part, this is good," he clearly is trying to imply that Obama is willing to deny the historical atrocities committed by such groups, as if Obama condones and even endorses beheading women accused of adultery, disfiguring schoolgirls merely because they want an education, or starving a nation but yet spending billions developing nuclear arms. Is this really the discourse conservatives want to have? If so, then they will have to be willing to accept that this mess didn't start under Obama's administration, and that all preceding policies have been abject failures.