MARCU$

That is just absolutely ridiculous.

“If there’s even a 1% chance that WMDs have been given to terrorists, we need to treat it as a certainty, not in our analysis or the preponderance of evidence, but in our response.”
Dick Cheney

This starts filtering all the way down through every aspect of foreign policy. Every action by a foreign power that’s not specifically aligned with American interests becomes interpreted as hostility … every other nations desire to act for their own security, when that action isn’t performed in concert with America, becomes a challenge to our global hegemony.

It is good for America to have diplomats, and intelligence community, and military planners who do look at the world through such a filter, vigilant for things which may turn into real threats. It is not good for America’s future security or prosperity to have politicians who react to each potential threat as an existential threat to us and our way of life.

> In short, exactly the wrong type of human to be depending to keep America safe in a dangerous world.

As if the morally absolutist, fiercely nationalist and judgmental, self-righteous George W. Bush’s decisions regarding Iraq were any better!!
I don’t know what world you and Frum are living in. The neocon approach was tried once, and the result was a disastrous and hugely controversial invasion of another nation for reasons that turned out to be false. It’s taken five long years plus enormous sacrifices in monetary and human terms to rectify that decision. And the key foreign policy decision of that era is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT REASON for the total implosion of political support for the Republican party during Bush’s second term, followed by the unlikely ascendancy of Obama and the Democrats.
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Say what you will about Obama, at least he seems to be making rational decisions based on what the current threats are as opposed to paranoid fantasies about what Iran “might” be doing ten or twenty years from now. Geopolitical decisions that are costly/risky in military or diplomatic terms have to be based on the current realities as opposed to paranoid speculation and guesstimates about what the bad guys “might” be doing a decade from now.

MARCU$

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, on Friday welcomed the Obama administration’s decision to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Europe as a positive step – but he said that other US concessions should follow.

In his first public comments since the White House announced its decision on Thursday, Mr Putin said that he wanted the US to support efforts by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to join the World Trade Organisation.

“I expect that after this correct and brave decision, others will follow,” Mr Putin said in a speech at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. These should include “the complete removal of all restrictions on the transfer of high technology to Russia and activity to widen the membership of the WTO to [include] Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus”, he said.
That’s what you get for being nice to Russia. Demands by Russia that you be even nicer.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aea8e54e-a43b-11de-92d4-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

I see Obama as entirely human.
I see him as that subspecies of human, called Late 20th Century Liberal Human: Morally relativist, transnationalist, nonjudgmental, supremely self-righteous.

In short, exactly the wrong type of human to be depending to keep America safe in a dangerous world.

I can’t envision Obama launching nuclear weapons, even if the U.S. was about to be obliterated.

I can. And I assume that 53% of the American electorate thought so too, or they wouldn’t have voted for him.

Yes, but if you’re the sheikh of Dubai, how much comfort do you get from America promising to avenge your death and the deaths of all of your subjects? Enough to stand up to Iran’s threats to annihilate your sheikhdom?

Fortunately, the Iranians did something very stupid when they funded a plot to blow up the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. I would not be surprised if the Israelis were getting a backchannel message that, should their aircraft need an emergency landing & refuelling spot in the Gulf during a strike on Iran, Dubai would not be averse to letting them stop there.