Richard Fernandez: I think the President wanted to draw down in the Middle East; wanted to draw down in what he may have then believed to be the theater of war in SW Asia, Afghanistan. That was what he promised his political base. ...
The trouble was that the War on Terror, whose existence he tried so hard to deny, was real. Bit by bit his plans were forced back. Iran told him off, .... Syria went up in flames.... The Palestinian State issue became an irrelevance.... The Arab Spring has forced him into at least one more war with maybe more to come.
And in SW Asia he could only “get Bin Laden” at the cost of proving what he himself would have wanted to deny. That America is under attack from rogue states through fronts. Worse, those rogue states are America’s allies.
... All of his triumphs have come at the cost of imitating the policies of his despised predecessor. His base may pretend not to notice, but they wouldn’t notice an elephant in their living room if it was pouring them coffee and dancing the fandango.
President Obama has resurrected all of themes he sought so earnestly to bury. He has debunked himself beyond his wildest dreams. ...
Yet the momentum of his mental blunders will continue to dog him even as changes course, all the while denying that he is. He has to make certain strategic choices which is loathe to make. He’ll need more than 16 hours to think them over. But reality is hard taskmaster and the President may find that what he wants to do is not the same as what he will be forced to do by the reality he wishes wasn’t there.
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