Posted by
America Forever on Saturday, February 21, 2009 3:29:29 PM
Concession # 1: You can sense that, whereas Bush stammered because he was searching for a word from his non-Buckleyite vocabulary, Obama stammers even more because he's trying to fit all the details into the context of his thoughts and responses. OK, Obama appears to be better at the details than W showed himself to be.
So What? # 1: But, a good President doesn't govern by consuming, and regurgitating, details like a starved individual. He governs by making solid and consistent policy. I believe it was another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who made the world safe for scheduling tennis play at the White House. Of course, Carter's only real legacy is that he "whipped" Ted Kennedy during his re-nomination effort.
Concession # 2: I actually learned a term that I hadn't heard of when President Obama used it in his inaugural press conference. When he was speaking about Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said something about what sounded to me like "Fatah and those border regions." Hey, I thought I knew a little something about that neck of the woods but I hadn't heard of the Fatah region.
Investigation # 1: So, off to Google and Wikipedia I go. After just a little research (I am good, ain't I?), I found that it wasn't Fatah but the acronym F.A.T.A., which stands for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Obviously, this is an official term used by the Government and people of Pakistan to describe that region of their country.
So What? # 2: Let me state my problem with that term even if it's officially used by the Pakistani's. Since when does one use the term "tribe" to refer to a group of people unless it is with derision? Having roots myself in the Indian subcontinent, it seems to me another sign of the problems we face in that area when whole lots of people are referred to as "tribes." But, since when does a President of the U.S. use that term -- not to describe just our enemy but to describe the people who are inhabitants of the area where our enemy is hiding and operating from?
So What? # 3: When President Bush used the term axis-of-evil in his 2002 State of the Union address to describe the evil regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, he was pilloried and ridiculed by a press, a party and what-goes-for a civilized world. They didn't let up on that for the next 7 years. Now, we have a supposedly worldly man in his place, who doesn't hesitate to use terms like "tribal regions" loosely.
So What? # 4: And, the press (which -- to my awareness -- never used that term before) happily goes along. It's a small point -- I know that -- but it just points out the hypocrisy of the man and his supporters. And, it gave me something to write about at the end of a totally-unimpressive first 30 days (Specter, Snowe and Collins notwithstanding). I fear that this may be the first of many posts on Pakistan. As I suspected during the campaign, our President thinks, based on the three weeks he spent visiting his mother in Pakistan back in the early 1980's, that he can straighten out the Pakistani's. A bit of advice, Mr. President: proceed with caution.