It is quite apparent our current CINC is developing a curious track record?<\/p>\n
James Taranto notes with a certain irony:<\/a><\/p>\n We are not the first to make this observation. “For a president who promised to end the gunslinger ways of his predecessor, Barack Obama has proven himself comfortable with the use of lethal force,” the Los Angeles Times<\/a> reports. The paper counts Gadhafi as another “notch” on Obama’s “lethal-force belt,” along with Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and others. “All told this year,” the report adds, the president “has sent U.S. troops into action on land or in the skies of seven countries on two continents.”<\/p>\n A New York Times<\/a> “news analysis” describes Gadhafi’s death as “vindication, however harrowing,” of Obama’s “carefully calibrated response” in which “a reluctant commander in chief put strict limits on American military engagement and let NATO allies take the lead in backing the rebels”–a far less catchy way of saying “leading from behind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Toss in the de facto (tacit?)\u00a0 support for The Arab Spring and we have a foreign policy that is hardly Peace oriented.<\/p>\n I’ll file Taranto’s closing paragraphs under “wish I’d said that”.<\/p>\n One difference between Obama’s foreign and domestic policies is that the former are conducted in a relatively economical fashion. National Journal<\/a> reports that “according to the Pentagon, [this] was the cost to U.S. taxpayers for Muammar el-Qaddafi’s head: $1.1 billion through September, the latest figure just out of the Defense Department.”<\/p>\n At that rate, you could knock off 400 dictators for $440 billion–still less than Obama wants to waste on Stimulus Jr. That’s the best illustration yet of just how skewed this administration’s priorities are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hey OWS… I think ya missed this!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"