On Syria, it seems Obama’s made up his mind about what to do but then again perhaps he’s not made up his mind at all.
Maybe it’s all a clever strategic head-fake on Obama’s part. I doubt it, however; his slowness to come to a decision in military matters has become legendary.
The whole thing is also an opportunity to visit Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy on procrastination and the perils of decision-making and gear it to Obama’s predicament. Surprisingly little needed to be changed to make it fit:
To strike, or not to strike: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Assad,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To attack: to dither
No more; and by attack to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That Syria is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To act, to attack;
To attack: perchance to depose: ay, there’s the rub;
For in its wake what next may come
Whether or not Assad shuffles off this worldwide stage,
Should give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of intervention;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of chemical war, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his mark make
With a bare missile? who would tyrants bear,
To defy the red lines that he drew?
But that the dread of something afterward,
The unknown consequences in whose grip
A legacy might founder, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair MSM! Sycophants, in thy orisons
Be all my sins forgotten.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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Comments
You’ve given Obama far too much contemplativeness. He just knows all the answers– as most Leftists believe they do– he just dithers because he doesn’t have the guts to follow the nonsense that his head “knows.”
The other kids in the neighborhood are not joining his choom gang…
Every year Dubya was in office his approval ratings dropped.
Sure, right after 9/11, his approval rating zoomed to 86%. But it’s downhill from there.
I think for Obama it will be in reverse. People, will in time, be glad he didn’t go “sock it to syria.” Because it was a saudi trick. The saud’s have been funding the terror. And, the gas canisters! They probably thought they could get Obama to do “stuff” the way they bamboozled Dubya.
Americans are not interested in getting involved in Syria.
And, we shouldn’t have been involved with taking out Gaddafi, either.
Amazing, the President is actually listening to the People! While in the UK, David Cameron came up short on his desire to “go sock it to the syrians.” The vote was negative. Went the other way. He lost by 13 “points.”
Carol,
Otherwise, how are things on your planet? (What planet is it again that you live on?)
News deemed to likely cause political grief is held back till Friday evening, ideally just before a holiday weekend. Like Labor Day.
By Jove, Henry, I think you’ve got it.
That was a very good piece!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
neo2, damn clever
“perchance to depose: ay, there’s the rub”
Me thinks there’s an ayatollah slobbering in the wings
Brava! Brilliant!
If only Obama spent so much time in thought! He only watches the Sports channel on TV.
My contribution, Obama as Antony:
People of the world, Americans, LSM, lend me your ears.
I come to evade global mockery, not to praise Assad.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Assad. The noble French
Hath told you Assad used chemical weapons:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously will Assad answer for it.
Here, under leave of France and the rest, —
For those hot for a strike are honorable men;
As are Al Qaeda jihadis, all honourable men, —
Come I to speak to avoid international mocking.
I wanted Assad to be my friend, faithful and just to me:
But the Alawite rejected me and proved Bushitler right;
Still the Alawite is not to be deposed.
He hath killed many fellow Syrians.
Of whose rebellion he did not approve:
Did this in Assad seem not murderous?
When that the Alawites have cried, Assad hath wept:
Murderousness should be made of sterner stuff:
Pelosi said the road to peace was through Damascus;
And Pelosi is an honorable woman.
You all did see that from the golf course
I thrice for him did move the red line,
Which he did thrice cross: was this not murderous?
Yet Kerry says Assad was with him generous;
And, sure, Kerry is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Pelosi and Kerry spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do not know.
You all did hate him once, –not without cause:
What cause withholds you, then, to fire across his bows?
O judgement, thou art fled to Al Qaeda’s brutish beasts,
And the French and Cameron have lost their reason! –Bear with me;
My heart frets the global mockery of me,
And I must pause till it blows over me.
C’mon, you know as well as I do that if our Commander in Chief is going to be refereed to in Shakespearean Obamic Pentameter, it would be more appropriate to quote Much Ado About Nothing. rather than defile these brillant drama’s with an obamanation. 😉
Besides, the Shakespearean line that best captures the essence of an Obama speech is “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!”
Prove it!
I really expect Syria to get a hundred cruise-missile salute, followed by a wave of adoration from the press indicating just how effectively he took care of the threat. After all, we have all those Block II Tomahawk cruise missiles that need to be replaced by Block IV missiles, so we might as well dispose of them in some other country. /sarc
This analogy doesn’t work for me. Hamlet was a nobleman, a conscientious man. Obama is a punk. We have to stop associating all sorts of temporizing and cowardly political hesitation and indecision with Hamlet.
Tend to agree. By the time of writing the Danish had been beaten from England 500 years. Ironically just a few days before William The Conquerer arrived. The English had to march from winning one battle right downto meet William.
Yet their impact had Shakespeare finding an immediate audience with Hamlet.
They were something special . Not sure anyone will be writing dramas about Obamain 500 years.
So you want Richard III’s “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” To become “A missile! A missile! American prestige for a missile!”
Or, perhaps Lear would be a better fit, in fecklessness and folly? Antony was a punk, too, and just as demagogic as Obama. Perhaps Malvolio from Twelfth Night, with all his posturing and folly better captures Obama.
The thing is, Shakespeare exhibited a masterful understanding of human nature and so is a deep well for
This thread summarizes the Obama Administration rather nicely.
Aimless dithering over feckless policies and actions, reading long speeches written by others brighter than himself and transmitted via teleprompter because he is not even a good enough actor to memorize his own lines, [now we need to represent the rest of his tenure with] partying, vacationing, playing golf, and admiring himself in the mirror.
Obama probably thinks ‘Hamlet’ is a small pig.
This guy is a malignant bozo, and his only ‘thought’ here is to aid the Muslim Brotherhood.
[…] Go here to read the rest. Ah, I imagine those Norwegian leftists are now regretting that Nobel Peace Prize they bestowed upon Obama for the glorious achievement of not being George Bush. […]
Too bad we don’t have some process of deciding whether we should go to war not. Maybe we could even get Congress involved.
I think Obama has been seeing the ghost of his late father and is not in his right mind.
Send in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort Obama to Sweden where he will receive another Nobel Prize for indecision on a global scale.
Very droll!
But Barry’s just play-acting re Syria.
He’s refusing to go to Congress because he wants to shield the Democrats in Congress from having to make a tough vote that will probably backfire on them, if and when things don’t go as Barry “plans.”
Anyway, Syria is a trifecta for our feckless, ego-centric, Islamist-sympathizing president:
1. Most importantly for Barry, he gets to save face for his stupid comment about a red line.
2. He gets to help the radical Islamists take power in Syria, while protecting his mole status by pretending that he wasn’t trying to help them, just bring justice to Assad.
3. As a bonus, there’s a fair chance that Israel will suffer an attack as blowback from Barry’s fickle decision. As an anti-Semite, Barry’s as happy as can be if that happens.