State of the Union Address on Foreign Policy: Careful Phrasing Conceals Disasters
If one wants to analyze Obama’s claims, the auto industry is the place to start. Look at the policies of General Motors, the most favored and government-influenced of all American companies, which has shipped jobs overseas. If American cars are on those foreign streets, it will be because they were manufactured in China. (I wonder if Obama’s choice of South Korea rather than China as the Asian country in his list was deliberately made to conceal that fact.)
And then, par for the course, he announces a new and unneeded additional bureaucracy called the Trade Enforcement Unit, which will carry on investigations that could be done by existing institutions.
That’s how Obama creates jobs.
He continues,
I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough.
Well, in fact it is easy to show that his investments in wind, solar, and battery industries have been an abject failure. One would have thought Obama would avoid that topic; however, his immunity to prosecution by the mass media makes him bold here. There are deep structural reasons why China is ahead — lower wages, lower costs, less regulation, and less safety. That’s not going to change. Obama is doubling down on a losing proposition.
Then he produces a real whopper:
Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies.
This is a coded reference to the anti-Iraq war argument that intervention in that country was tying down American forces that could be used elsewhere. Obama is saying: Now that we are out of Iraq, we’ll really get those terrorists!
Yet Obama has claimed victory over the terrorists while U.S. forces in Iraq were at their height. His own statements undercut that argument. And what big new way has the United States used to strike blows at its enemies since the withdrawal? I cannot think of anything (continued drone strikes in Yemen?). But if you think that the Benghazi terrorists (not the California videomaker), the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas in particular, the Syrian Brotherhood and Salafists, Hizballah, etc., are “enemies,” then how has the Obama administration escalated efforts against them now that it has pulled all those troops out of Iraq and can spare them for other operations?
Like much of Obama’s speech, if one actually pays attention to the language and claims, it dissolves into ridiculousness.
A simply excellent commentary on O’s State of the Union address. Frankly, I rarely listen to any of these as they are full of silly platitudes, meaningless phrases & 99% brown sugar. However, O has reached the pinnacle of lies in his address. Certainly, NO one could have done it better than O-even Bill Clinton. And, quite frankly, everyone knows what an excellent liar he is.
Our Dear Leader just yaps away like an annoying, arrogant & proud poodle at the world while our country races down the path to the garbage heap of nations. Sadly, our 0nce great land will never recover from the Obama regime.
How can so many not see that the Emperor (meant in every sense of the word) has no clothes & is a complete phoney & failure? It is truly beyond me…
“If American cars are on those foreign streets, it will be because they were manufactured in China. (I wonder if Obama’s choice of South Korea rather than China as the Asian country in his list was deliberately made to conceal that fact.)”
Weren’t South Korea, Panama and Colombia the three free trade agreements Democrats had blocked under Bush but finally ratified under Obama? That’s where I assumed his speech was pointing to. With one of their own in the White House, Dems are free traders. (As with NAFTA and GATT under Clinton. Would a Democratic Congress have passed either of these agreements with Bush 41 in the WH?)
This guy Obam is ridiculing the political awareness of Americans and at most the global community. I’ve got a disturbing hunch, he himself is not aware of the facts, nor had he not gone across the speech before delivery, his writers pure charlatans fishing accolades for their Big Patron the president, than serving the people with facts and truths.
This person, is a real inspired one by the ‘abomination of desolation’. He is a typical or exact replica of it.
I disagree with Mr Rubin: the State of the Union speech by Pres Obama was cogent, eloquent and poignant. It is a privilege to be alive in the Obama era, year in which America at last shed its legacy of racism. From his pioneering approach to Islamophobia to advocacy for social justice, Pres Obama will effect fundamental change in the United States and throughout the world. Let us open the borders and set the minimum wage to $100,000 per year as an innovative program to eliminate poverty in this hemisphere. Watch and wait as unilateral cuts in the American nuclear arsenal inspires the world — and in particular Iran and North Korea — to eliminate their own nuclear weapons programs. The Nobel-recognized moral example of Pres Obama will surely bring peace in our time.
Let me guess moshe, you are also in favor of getting rid of marijuana laws.
after re-reading you comment, I realized it was sarcasm.
“… & 99% brown sugar.” Ah – ha! I knew you were racist! (Sorry…couldn’t help myself.)
With the situation in the middle east becoming more unstable by the day and several large African nations perpetually on the brink of a Muslim / Christian civil conflict I can’t see even Obama’s delusional world view maintaining his run of imaginary foreign policy successes
This is an interesting and still-timely commentary, but it seems to apply to the 2012 SOTU, not the one delivered by Obama this week.
Notice a very strange and ungrammatical formulation: “Most of al-Qaieda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.”
This is neither ungrammatical nor strange. And, with respect, it’s not too difficult to find “ungrammatical formulations” in any of Dr. Rubin’s posts. An annoying recurring example is the improper use of “would” in conditional protases expressing past-tense counterfactuals.