An Obama Doctrine? What Obama Doctrine?

by John Hawkins | December 11, 2009 9:02 am

Last night on Twitter, Allah Pundit from Hot Air[1] was going off on the idea that Obama’s Nobel Prize speech was important because it laid down some sort of foreign policy doctrine.

His comments were right on point:

What groundbreaking “doctrine” did he really lay out? “Sometimes war is necessary, but we should also use diplomacy, and…

How is that “doctrine” at all useful in resolving real-world foreign policy dilemmas? It encompasses all scenarios.

Question re: O’s speech today, which some are calling the “Obama doctrine”: What exactly is the Obama doctrine?

His speech encompassed the galaxy of foreign policy options: War, diplomacy, national interest, moral ideals.

How is it in any way useful towards addressing concrete foreign policy problems?

Sometimes we need war. But other times we need diplomacy. Sometimes we reach out to bad regimes. Other times we use sanctions.

We must not overextend ourselves. But we must also bear our cherished values ever in mind.

It’s not a doctrine at all. It’s a “here’s me keeping my options open going forward by touting every possible solution to a problem” dodge

“There are some who say an Obama doctrine exists. Others say it does not. I agree with both.”

Do you want me to explain the “Obama Doctrine” in a nutshell? It’s take the most liberal policy you can get away with while publicly taking that position and a diametrically opposed position simultaneously.

For example, Obama can firmly declare that there’s no way Iran will be allowed to have nuclear weapons while doing absolutely nothing to stop them. Another example, in Afghanistan, it’s a war of necessity that we have to win, but it also has a time — and that timeline? Obama has simultaneously set a timeline while saying it doesn’t mean anything and we might conceivably only withdraw a handful of troops.

If that sounds about as clear as mud, well, that’s how he likes it. By taking both positions, he confuses his political adversaries and then can claim to take whichever foreign policy is most politically expedient at the time, all the while knowing his liberal supporters in the mainstream media will ignore the fact that his deeds didn’t match his words.

Welcome to “change,” liberal style, where life and death foreign policy decisions are just one more petty political issue to be managed like earmarks or NEA grants.

Endnotes:
  1. Hot Air: http://hotair.com/

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