There’s an exchange in the movie The Big Chill that frequently comes back to me:
Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
If you have a spare hour or so and you long for some juicy rationalizations, you might want to check out Jeffrey Goldberg’s lengthy article, “The Obama Doctrine” at Atlantic, the product, apparently, of interviews with the president and his advisors.
I won’t engage in a fisking of the article, lest I produce a post that challenges Mr. Goldberg’s piece in length. Suffice it to say that when you operate from the premise that you are always right, you have the bad habit of musing in public, and you are the president of the United States, the only way your premise can be maintained is by engaging in some world-class rationalization.
That no single U. S. act destabilized Libya, prolonged the Syrian revolution, or impelled the Saudis to attack Yemen does not mean that U. S. action had no effect on any of these things at all. The Grand Canyon was not caused by a single drip of water but we can hardly doubt that it was produced by the action of water over time. Just because something is not dispositive does not render it irrelevant.
Actions matter. Inaction matters. If you don’t want your actions or inaction to matter, don’t become president of the United States. Don’t rationalize your decisions to preserve the fantasy of your infallibility.
The president has surrounded himself with foreign policy interventionists. They were not foisted upon him willy-nilly. He chose them. We should be excused for suspecting that he has some sympathy with interventionism. The president may think of himself as a realist but that doesn’t make it so. Pursuing the interests of your country in ways that will accomplish those objectives and recognizing that other countries are trying to do the same thing is what makes you a foreign policy realist.
Are you treating interventionists and realists as diametric opposites?
No, I’m treating realists and idealists as diametric opposites. R2P, the foundation of our intervention in Libya and the argument for intervening in Syria, is an idealistic position rather than a realistic one. Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Gayle Smith, and Valerie Jarrett, generally characterized as the administration’s most influential foreign policy advisors, are all idealists.
Shouldn’t there have been SOME ‘P’ in the R2P?
“Suffice it to say that when you operate from the premise the you are always right, you have the bad habit of musing in public, and you are the……[pick an executive position]…..the only way your premise can be maintained is by engaging in some world-class rationalization.”
Probably in the top three causes of executive failure, and a trait clearly evidencing unsuitability (at least yet) for the position.