Obama's pathetic speech at West Point to the graduating class of 2014

by Rob Janicki

Another day, another blame game speech by a small man occupying the American presidency.  President Obama, in another pathetic speech, blamed everyone for his feckless foreign policy failures, including, in great measure, the George W. Bush administration.

Here are few observations by Mackubin Thomas Owens at NRO

President Obama’s speech at West Point was not so much an articulation of his foreign policy but a defensive response to critics. With the exception of some details, such as the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, the establishment of a new Counterterrorism Partnership fund, and his new interest in Syria, there was nothing new in what he presented (and of course his Syria policy is an example of “a day late and a dollar short” — which might be the appropriate foreign-policy motto of this administration).


Oh and of course his apparently rediscovered belief “with every fiber of my being” in American exceptionalism. Always a critic of “false choices” in foreign policy — intervention vs. isolation, war vs. diplomacy — his speech was a recitation of one after another.

Obama is on record as saying the U.S. is not anymore exceptional than any other nation in the world, so his assertion today that the U.S. is exceptional, is merely a political means to cover up his true beliefs already on record.

Going on with Owens' observations.

And his risible claim that “America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world,” that “those who argue otherwise — who suggest that America is in decline or has seen its global leadership slip away — are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics,” surely evoked gales of laughter in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, and concern in Jerusalem, Tokyo, Seoul, and Warsaw.

In the past month, Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, essentially told Obama to lead, follow or get out of the way, intimating that Obama's fecklessness in foreign policy execution has caused the enemies of the western allies to take advantage of America's lack of leadership.  All one has to do is look to all Obama's failed foreign policy initiatives to understand why the world no longer trusts Obama or America to provide the leadership to face the tyranny and aggression of authoritarian dictatorships committed to the defeat of western influence in the world.

Finally ...

The president has repeated the tired refrain that he was not elected to start wars but to end them. However, despite his implication, wars are not fought for their own sake. Wars are fought to achieve some goal. The tragedy is that thanks to his fecklessness and predisposition to subordinate foreign policy to partisan politics, the purpose for which the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were fought will be lost.