9 Media Pubs Slam Obama’s Speech at West Point: ‘Icy,’ Ludicrous,’ ‘Uninspiring’ & ‘Disturbing’

1. Washington Post Editorial Board

“President Obama has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.”

2. New York Times Editorial Board

“President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left. [...]

[H]e provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years, and many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world. Falling back on hackneyed phrases like America is the ‘indispensable nation’ told us little.

The president said he wanted to spend $5 billion to train and support armies in places like Libya, Mali, Yemen and Somalia to combat terrorists. The aim is to avoid having to use American troops, and, in theory, it makes sense. But the United States has a checkered history in such endeavors, and Mr. Obama made only a cursory mention of other factors crucial to success, including responsible governance and education for all. It was disturbing to hear him gloss over the return of military rule in Egypt.” [via Hot Air]

3. Wall Street Journal Editorial

No mention of the Reset. “The reset button has worked,” Mr. Obama avowed in a 2009 meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s figurehead president. That was the same year Mr. Obama announced in Moscow that, “The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over.”

No mention of the Pivot or “rebalance” to Asia. This was billed by Hillary Clinton in 2011 as “among the most important diplomatic efforts of our time” and meant as proof that America’s withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan wasn’t simply a retreat from the world. But as assistant secretary of defense Katrina McFarland admitted in March, following the latest round of Pentagon cuts, “Right now, the pivot is being looked at again, because candidly it can’t happen.”

No mention of Mr. Obama’s Red Line in Syria against the use of chemical weapons…

4. Daily Mail Online

“Receiving tepid applause and a short standing ovation from less than one-quarter of the audience upon his introduction, Obama argued for a contradictory foreign policy that relies on NATO and the United Nations while insisting that ‘America must always lead on the world stage.’

‘If we don’t, no one else will,’ he insisted.”

5. The Guardian

“The promise of a less aggressive American foreign policy comes despite Obama’s increased use of drone assassinations and continued failure to shut the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.

Between the end of the cold war and 9/11, US presidents intervened militarily every 17 months on average, including Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, but Obama said the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq offered the chance of a new approach.”

6. Time

“So, what did Obama accomplish at West Point? It’s hard to say. The White House billed the speech as a response to his growing legion of foreign policy critics. But it won’t satisfy many of them, particularly those who want aggressive U.S. action from Ukraine to Syria to terrorist hotspots like northern Africa. Those critics will welcome Obama’s assurances about American global leadership, but they’ve heard that song from him before and doubt that he truly means it.

Nor was there much reassurance for foreign allies from the Asia Pacific to Eastern Europe who are fretting over the strength of American security guarantees. Obama steered clear of anything that might resemble a red line against aggression by China, Russia or Iran towards their neighbors.”

7. The Atlantic

“An old joke describes the action memos the State Department prepares for the president:

Option A: Do nothing

Option B: Global thermonuclear war

Option C: Preferred State Department policy

On the evidence of President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday, he’d have made an outstanding State Department memo-writer.”

8. L.A. Times Opinion Pages

“The criticisms have gotten under Obama’s skin. He gripes about them frequently, in public and in private. So, with a speech already promised for West Point’s graduation ceremony, he seized the opportunity for a longer, more considered version of his side of the argument.

His core message was familiar and entirely reasonable: The United States needs to remain engaged in the world but should not think of military intervention as its primary tool. ‘American isolationism is not an option,’ he said. ‘The United States is the one indispensable nation,’ the only country capable of organizing big multilateral coalitions to fix big international problems.

But then, alas, the president took aim at a whole battalion of straw men. ‘U.S. military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance,’ he said.”

9. CNN Politics

“Under fire from the political right for what critics call diminishing U.S. global influence, Obama offered a robust defense of his foreign policy as the pragmatic and most effective expression of America’s leadership role in the world.

‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ he said, referring to a tenet of conservative ideology.”

[Special note: In the deceptively edited video, CNN plays propagandistic music behind the president's speech, and ends with the cadets throwing their hats in the air - which was not the end of the president's speech. Neverthless, CNN jabbed the president by using the worst epithet in mainstream media lexicon - "conservative."]

10. CNN Commentators Jim Clancy and Jim Sciutto [via Breitbart News]

“CNN’s international experts gave a lackluster review to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech he gave at West Point on Wednesday. CNN International anchor and correspondent Jim Clancy said the address “was not really a great speech” given where the president was speaking.

He described the reception it garnered at West Point as “pretty icy.” Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto added that if “you speak to the leaders of [our allies] there is confusion.”

Sciutto cited the administration’s inaction in Ukraine, and change in position regarding the use of force in Syria.”

Αναγνώστης Stanley Litsas

Πηγή : ijreview.com