2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumOBAMA ON THE WORLD: Friedman NYT interview with Pres. Obama
Last edited Sat Aug 9, 2014, 01:07 PM - Edit history (1)
Once again, President Obama demonstrates his vision, his depth, his intellect and maturity - he is the true embodiment of the full development of humanity; what we are capable of when we marshall all of our mental powers, our ability to empathize and have compassion, and the restraint it all requires.
God help us I hope it's not all downhill from here ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html?smid=tw-nytimes
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"President Obamas hair is definitely grayer these days, and no doubt trying to manage foreign policy in a world of increasing disorder accounts for at least half of those gray hairs. (The Tea Party can claim the other half.) But having had a chance to spend an hour touring the horizon with him in the White House Map Room late Friday afternoon, its clear that the president has a take on the world, born of many lessons over the last six years, and he has feisty answers for all his foreign policy critics."
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Our politics are dysfunctional, said the president, and we should heed the terrible divisions in the Middle East as a warning to us: societies dont work if political factions take maximalist positions. And the more diverse the country is, the less it can afford to take maximalist positions.
While he blamed the rise of the Republican far right for extinguishing so many potential compromises, Obama also acknowledged that gerrymandering, the Balkanization of the news media and uncontrolled money in politics the guts of our political system today are sapping our ability to face big challenges together, more than any foreign enemy. Increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking the most extreme maximalist positions, he said, and sooner or later, that catches up with you.
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Ill give you an example of a lesson I had to learn that still has ramifications to this day, said Obama. And that is our participation in the coalition that overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. I absolutely believed that it was the right thing to do. ... Had we not intervened, its likely that Libya would be Syria. ... And so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction. But what is also true is that I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if youre going to do this. Then its the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, Thank you, America. At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didnt have any civic traditions. ... So thats a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after? "
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)hollowdweller
(4,229 posts)That I've been thinking about is how the whole anti gov't anti democrat total hatred of the dems coming from the conservative side is sort of a milder version of what is going on in the middle east.
That polling a while back about the partisan divide and how many republicans didn't even want to live near democrats.
We aren't to the level of other places yet but the whole thing does concern me. Especially when so many on the right who believe it come from the south and sort of trade in confederate rhetoric and symbols.
cilla4progress
(24,726 posts)CTyankee
(63,901 posts)I can't disagree with Obama. I really can't. I think he makes a lot of sense.
See what you think when you read the whole piece...
cilla4progress
(24,726 posts)The comments were interesting