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Jewish World Review Oct. 25, 2012/ 9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5773 The final debate: Who's living in the real world? By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The last of this year's long slog of presidential debates Monday night was about foreign affairs -- that is, the state of the world and America's place in it. By the end, the essential question raised by the debate should have been clear: Which candidate is living in the real world we've all experienced the past four years? And which in a world of denial and excuse-making? To ask such questions is to answer them. Just look around you. As the ancient Romans might say, to put it in plain Latin, res ipsa loquitur. The state of the world speaks for itself. And, as always, it is fraught with danger. And full of people who'll deny it. And who are ready to explain that we're doing just dandy. And about to do dandier. In the president's world -- any resemblance to the real one may be purely circumstantial -- we're living in the best of all possible worlds, thanks to his guidance, wisdom, leadership and virtues in general. Much like Voltaire's Candide, he looks around and concludes there is nothing to be improved on. Once again In the world his presidential challenger inhabits, along with the rest of us, this administration continues to be caught by surprise as its foreign policy unravels. Caught unawares, repeatedly, this administration has been unprepared for emergencies and, worse, unwilling to admit its mistakes, which only assures that more unpleasant surprises are in store. For how correct mistakes and misassumptions if they're never recognized? If there is a single event that summarizes this administration's unpreparedness, it is what happened just last month to the American consulate in Benghazi, to our ambassador and three other dedicated envoys there, and what it revealed about the whole, unwinding fabric of American policy in the Revealing, too, is what didn't happen after Benghazi: an honest, far-reaching re-assessment of the assumptions that policy is based on. Assumptions this president has operated on from the outset of his administration, when he made a grand apology tour speaking of how America had "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even divisive" in the world. Much as the president might like to deny it now. Just as he did in the aftermath of the attack in Benghazi. Yes, he may have offered some lip service in general to this country's war on terror when he spoke immediately after the attack on our consulate ("No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation..."). But he forbore to specify that the assault in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Indeed, his administration has studiously avoided any mention of a war on terror, preferring the euphemism Overseas Contingency Operations. For weeks after Benghazi, key members of this administration--like our ambassador to the UN, Not just for political reasons -- to support the president's claim in this election that he's got the terrorists "on the run" -- but as a reflection of a deeper, ideological worldview: If only we weren't so arrogant, all would be well. If only we went around the world apologizing and extending the hand of friendship, our enemies would grasp it. It would all be so easy. Like closing Guantanamo.
The late
The president continues to insist our alliances are in great shape. Ri-i-ight. Tell it to the Poles, who had the rug pulled out from under them when long-agreed-upon plans for a missile-defense system in
To quote The world certainly noticed. Specifically, it noticed the absence of the moral authority America has shown again and again as one tyranny after another has arisen to threaten the peace of the world. And as the mullahs in
Monday night, the president responded to such concerns mainly by attacking his opponent, delivering one zinger after another. But zingers do not a foreign policy make. Or as
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