The Crisis Leadership of No-Drama Obama

[DonViejo]

Jonathan Alter

Why re-drawing Iraq, not withdrawing from it, may be his legacy.

When President Obama strode to the microphones on the South Lawn at midday Friday, Americans were primed for an important announcement about the crisis in Iraq. After all, the tectonic plates of history are shifting beneath our feet, as a major Sunni-Shiite rumble threatens to rip apart the Middle East.

Instead, the public heard the kind of thoughtful, nuanced, contingency-based analysis that Obama is known for behind closed doors, as if we had all been invited into the Situation Room.

Unfortunately for the president, our muscle memory expected something, anything, that might convey strong leadership in a crisis. Obama is now a victim of the paradox embedded in public attitudes on foreign policy and identified recently by the author Robert Kagan—that Americans may prefer a lesser role in the world, but they aren’t proud of it.

The president’s challenge for the next couple of years is to convince the public that he doesn’t actually want a reduced American role in global affairs, just a reduced military role. Indeed, Obama will likely need to dramatically increase the American diplomatic presence in the region, especially when it comes time—as it likely will—to carve up Iraq.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/15/the-crisis-leadership-of-no-drama-obama.html

[Thinkingabout]

1. Iraq is a pushed together nation which does not want to be together.

It has been man intervention which put them together and to separate them back into three nations would be good for the different groups to rule themselves.

[IrishAyes]

2. You took the words right outta my mouth! Iraq was cobbled together that way after WWII

because the ruling elite didn't want a strong, cohesive nation - but rather one more easily fractured and manipulated. Our efforts at rebuilding in Germany and Japan worked so well for 2 reasons: better intentions, and those nations were pretty homogenous. Modern day Iraq was sewn together like a Frankenstein's monster. It was meant to fail.