The fall of Obama?

[tik 🪀✨]

Yikes.

It looks to me as though Obama is trying to combat his perception of being naive on foreign policy or too dovish by going out of his way to say things like this that only turn around to bite him in the ass and thus seem, well, naive on foreign policy.

Denying that civilians get killed by the US is pretty idealistic, though. Of course they do. But that isn't the intent.

It's amusing to me how quickly opposition to Obama will jump on this rhetoric. It makes them look afraid of him.

[tik 🪀✨]

Withdraw from Iraq, surge in Afghanistan, meet with Bashir Assad, and unilaterally attack Pakistan if necessary.

The problem isn't so much that he's been gaffing, so much as it is a problem that he does not seem to have a consistent foreign policy message. 

I don't think those things are exactly inconsistent.. though I would agree he doesn't have any bumper sticker phrases to sum up his viewpoint.

Withdrawing from Iraq and surging into Afghanistan and invading Pakistan if necessary kind of flows together. Refocusing the 'War on Terrorism' away from Iraq and towards Afghanistan and ultimately catching Bin Laden who is believed to be somewhere in Afghanistan/Pakistan is something that the majority of Americans can get behind, I would think. Meeting with our enemies isn't terrible either, if we can convince them to change their ways through diplomacy. Many would argue that avoiding direct confrontation (be it verbal or not) with Iran and North Korea has only made them act out even more, for example.

Of course I'm no foreign policy expert, but I don't think his stances are exactly ridiculous. He's just been bad at expressing them effectively. It's always a very complicated thing to discuss, obviously, so I'm not surprised he would get flack for running off his mouth.