Obviously, you shouldn’t conduct foreign policy by reading polls, but the remarkable thing is that it wouldn’t be popular anyway. I can tell this because the public pretty strongly disapproves of President Obama’s foreign policy even as what he has actually done in most cases has been the most popular position. What people are really objecting to is the results of their own desires.
For example, in Iraq, I don’t think anyone is pleased with the situation that has developed there, but most people wanted us to leave Iraq and not leave any residual forces. Most people don’t want to sacrifice American lives and treasure in Iraq and ultimately don’t much care what happens there so long as it doesn’t have any effect here at home. To a somewhat lesser extent, the same is true of Afghanistan. It’s true of Libya, Syria and Ukraine, too.
Maybe the big boys have interests to protect in the region, and maybe the oil supply needs to be protected, but the Average Joe doesn’t want any part of that hornet’s nest. For the most part, the president has resisted efforts to get more involved militarily in the region, and he’s wriggled out of numerous traps or opted for minimalist approaches where some action seemed necessary.
If people don’t like to watch a sectarian civil war develop across several borders, they can blame Bush/Cheney for kicking the hornet’s nest in the first place. If President Obama can’t fix the problem, he can at least keep us at arm’s length and protect American lives and resources. This is what the American people say they want, and yet they are still unhappy.
But the alternative would be for President Obama to falsely claim that he has a solution and then to squander lives and resources in a vain and doomed effort to fix a problem that he can not solve. That would not improve his poll numbers.
So, we get a lot of people saying “just do something,” even though they can’t articulate anything he can do that would either work or be supported by the public.
And, yes, this will only be Obama’s problem for a little while longer. Soon, it will be the Republicans who are running for president’s problem. They have no idea what to do, and they will discover that no course of action is popular.
We Libtards are still waiting for an apology from the Conservaturds, who were wrong about… well, EVERY THING!!!
The folks talking about ‘doing something’ are the same idiots cheering us going into Iraq. Let them continue to be stupid.
And the crazy thing is that if Obama did decide to kick ass somewhere (anywhere) and bomb the shit out of some country he would probably be wildly popular, at least for a while, as people applaud him for being decisive and doing “something” and showing American muscle and not being such a wuss. People would rally behind the troops to show loyalty and patriotism and any casualties would “prove” that the other side were “bad” for daring to fight back thus justifying the intervention retrospectively regardless of the original justification.
And when things start to go sour any doubters would be silenced for being unpatriotic and the US would double down to justify the original intervention and to prevent the loss of face involved in being proved to being spectacularly wrong in the first place.
As Kennedy (Cuba), Thatcher (Falklands), and Reagan (Grenada) demonstrated, there is nothing like a little war – against however less well armed an opponent – to gin up the jingoists and win greater popularity at home.
What every empire always needs—A Splendid Little War!
Kennedy-Cuba? I don’t think so.
Reagan and Thatcher sound right.
I’m referring to his out bluffing Khrushchev, rather than Bay of Pigs.
Thx for clarification, but I still find it off the mark and a bit too cynical to think Kennedy had those goals in mind. A conversation for another time …
Whatever his intentions, it is the effect of making war on public opinion I am talking about.
Doing something aggressive? Might be popular at first, but the right-wingers would attack him savagely for putting Our Boys in harm’s way at all AND for not doing it, whatever “it” is, competently. The media would dutifully report it all as totally valid. Any uptick in popularity would be hammered away at till it subsided.
Let anything go sour? The right wing and its media lapdogs would pound him mercilessly for being just as incompetent and heedless of Our Boys’ welfare as they’d said all along.
Never forget, for the right wing plus a sizable segment of the media, and of the American public, Obama cannot possibly ever do anything right.
It’s as if the rightwing took lessons in victimhood and demanding two contradictory things from their kids. The original was a source of great humor when presented by Jewish comedians. Perhaps in a generation or two, kids of wingnuts will make us laugh. Until then … oy vey.
Everything is purveyed through the lens of “a feckless and indecisive man, who is in way over his head”, and the only way to succeed is for him to turn over the decision making to those who got us into this mess in the first place. That is essentially what John McCain was spouting during this last pass through his Beltway Circle Of Love, otherwise known as The Sunday Talk Shows. And the media have done their part to give a platform for this narrative. And along with Cheney and all of his friends in the neocon cabal, they seemed to poo-poo the whole crazy idea that the American people are war weary and simply don’t want to engage, once again, as the cowboys in the white hats who are spreading the love of freedom, in all its untidiness.
It will be interesting to see the public spectacle pitting the saber rattling, gun-toting faction of the GOP against the Rand Paul-ites who will, no doubt, call out this rousing battle cry coming from the right for some more good old-fashioned American war-making.
Please proceed, GOP.
excellent use of von Rumsfeld! Quite remarkable how his wisdom was always applicable to only that particular moment…
“This is what the American people say they want, and yet they are still unhappy.”
I think that is a misreading of the mood. I am unhappy with US foreign policy and support us staying out. There is no contradiction… not for me anyway. I object to he whole militarist / interventionist policy. Just because Obama has mostly held back doesn’t mean he won’t pull the trigger in the future. He seems to want to. Clinton would do it and get support from her neo-con friends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clin
ton.html?ref=opinion
So our foreign policy sucks and will continue to unless obama and clinton completely washes their hands of all this nonsense about america leading the world. That doesn’t appear to be in the cards so I will continue to express my disgust for the whole stinking mess.
US foreign policy is a bi-partisan catastrophe.
Just because Obama has mostly held back doesn’t mean he won’t pull the trigger in the future. He seems to want to.
He does? Based on what? He’s had plenty of opportunities, especially in Syria.
You can criticize Obama for how he’s handled the mess he inherited from Bush/Cheney, of course, but he hasn’t shown any inclination to start any new catastrophes.
He does? Based on what?
Progressive blogs.
Based on what? Based on Libya, Nigeria, Yemen, Central Africa, the afghan surge, the drone wars… only a groundswell of opposition kept us out of syria. And we are again involving ourselves (ever so gingerly) in Iraq.
Oh come on. If he’d wanted to shoot missiles at Syria he would have done it. He had Republicans demanding that he get in there and start blowing shit up, and no one was saying anything about a Congressional authorization, so he basically had a green light.
Otherwise, I wasn’t aware that he’d invaded and occupied Libya, Nigeria, Yemen, and Central Africa. I mean, that was my point about Bush/Cheney’s mess. There’s plenty to criticize in the way he’s continued those policies, but there’s no reason to make stuff up. There’s a gigantic difference between failing to clean up one mess and being eager to create a new one.
I think we just have different standards… if invading another country is the only catastrophe worth criticizing, then you are right. I don’t happen to believe that.
the only reason he hasn’t bombed some place yet is that he’s undecided which to do first – cut social security or bomb some place
OK, I stand corrected. He does seem to want to start a war. Just look at this recent picture of him.
He. Didn’t. Even. Try.
Apparently Americans hate themselves for wanting less military intervention. And the prez that delivers their desires is despicable! And weak! We want non-intervention–with strength!
Of course, a very large segment of the deeply dissatisfied are “conservatives” who have been assured that the Iraq fiasco is really the fault of the inexperienced neophyte Obammy. The story seemingly involves failing to intervene (on the anti-Assad side of jihadis) in Syria, which then somehow “allowed” said jihadis to invade Iraq–which turned out to be a hapless basket case militarily, also Obammy’s fault, of course. Also, too, Benghazi!
The American national psyche is so fucked up that analysis is simply impossible. We’ll never know what we want to be when we grow up. And massive ignorance and disdain for all things foreign doesn’t help matters much.
The idea seems to be that everything in the world is to go the way that America wants it because Imperial Stormtruppen (“Speak softly and carry a big stick”), or else the prez is weak and America is utterly humiliated and defeated. This is specifically a McCainian formulation, but it is time honored and informs most of the “conservative” movement and a very large segment beyond that.
No other sane nation operates with such delusions. Of course no other nation pours the kind of money down the the useless “defense” (i.e. militarism) rathole that we do, either.
Right now the whole GOP is simply functioning with a complete PSYOP mentality. That is their whole game right now. They have managed to convince a whole lot of people that they are extremely unhappy with everything the President does. But if you ask them about specific things in isolation, they will often answer in the complete opposite way to the conditioning which GOP machine and the media have promulgated. That is why so much of the actual quantifiable evidence is so in conflict with the perceived reality on the ground. Numbers don’t matter, facts are irrelevant. I just “feel helpless and angry”. There is enough actual hurt going on around the country right now which the GOP could exploit for their political advantage, if they were smart about it. Yet they feel compelled to go mostly at those things which motivate their base, not those things which might actually be tenuous and difficult issues for the President. Many people, including a lot of Democrats, have real issues with some of what the Obama administration has done in some areas. But the GOP seems destined continue to flagellate the very issues which will severely bite them in the ass. As a long term plan, this is the very definition of insanity.
I just examined several poll results regarding the Obama administration. It appears people are currently in a disagreeable mood about almost everything. Maybe they are disappointed with their own lives. I’m not sure why since unemployment is down some, stock market up, healthcare delivering, no big wars, etc. However, 51% agreed with the following statement:
“Would you say that Barack Obama cares about the needs and problems of people like you or not?”
This same question wasn’t asked about Republicans, but I bet it would be a lot lower than 51%. This opinion matters more than some other opinions.
I presume that Americans feel that way for good reason, possibly a reason that isn’t readily reducible to polling.
If unemployment is down, the stock market is up, health care is delivering, there are no big war, and people are still struggling and hurting, maybe something deeper is broken.
They’re depressed by the lack of truly progressive choices in their candidates, is all.
It’s the only explanation.
I can think of a few other possibilities, but I’m not trying to score points.