How Sober Are These Days
?
President Obama has finally lost all the magic of Candidate Obama's speeches. I think that is a good thing. Tuesday's speech was serious and without an appeal to a grand vision. Did it successfully remind Americans of what has to be done in Afghanistan? In a way I am the wrong person to ask because I have always believed that that was the war we must fight and find a way to win or at least render that portion of the Earth unable to offer succor to terror training camps.
If we see so much as a terror-Gymkata on the outskirts of..say, Kandahar we need to bomb the ever-loving shit out of said terror-Gymkata.
I wasn't listening to be convinced that continuing the war in Afghanistan is right thing for American security. Right or wrong, I have always been of that mindset. Right or wrong, I have opposed the war in Iraq for some of the same reasons the President talked about on Tuesday.
I listened to hear if the President was really telling those brave cadets and the rest of us American people-folk what we are going to do - what it will require - and what if anything we need to brace ourselves for...
I'm not sure I got that on Tuesday. But I heard a serious man speak of a deadly and costly problem. I believe he may be willing to sacrifice his legacy and some of the programs/agendas of his closest supporters (things that don't mean shit to me, but probably things that mean, or meant a lot to Candidate Obama).
There's a nice turn near the end of the speech. We get the Lincoln reference, which is standard fare for speeches of this type, but then the President tells us he remembers and now yearns for the unity the nation felt in the days following the attacks on New York and Washington. This is a fine thing. This may be the thing most difficult to recover among a people in the process of ravaging themselves with their own shrill voices. In a way, it is a sad statement on these times that the new American dream might be of a society in which people stop screaming at each other long enough to listen to something else. Ok, I had a thread there and have clearly lost it. Must be my good ole modern American attention span.
Maybe I'll reflect more on this later...
On the lighter side, when Obama said the wars in A-stan and Iraq have already cost one trillion dollars, Alex asked, "Dad, is a trillion a real number?"
I responded, "These days boy...I don't know."
President Obama has finally lost all the magic of Candidate Obama's speeches. I think that is a good thing. Tuesday's speech was serious and without an appeal to a grand vision. Did it successfully remind Americans of what has to be done in Afghanistan? In a way I am the wrong person to ask because I have always believed that that was the war we must fight and find a way to win or at least render that portion of the Earth unable to offer succor to terror training camps.
If we see so much as a terror-Gymkata on the outskirts of..say, Kandahar we need to bomb the ever-loving shit out of said terror-Gymkata.
I wasn't listening to be convinced that continuing the war in Afghanistan is right thing for American security. Right or wrong, I have always been of that mindset. Right or wrong, I have opposed the war in Iraq for some of the same reasons the President talked about on Tuesday.
I listened to hear if the President was really telling those brave cadets and the rest of us American people-folk what we are going to do - what it will require - and what if anything we need to brace ourselves for...
I'm not sure I got that on Tuesday. But I heard a serious man speak of a deadly and costly problem. I believe he may be willing to sacrifice his legacy and some of the programs/agendas of his closest supporters (things that don't mean shit to me, but probably things that mean, or meant a lot to Candidate Obama).
There's a nice turn near the end of the speech. We get the Lincoln reference, which is standard fare for speeches of this type, but then the President tells us he remembers and now yearns for the unity the nation felt in the days following the attacks on New York and Washington. This is a fine thing. This may be the thing most difficult to recover among a people in the process of ravaging themselves with their own shrill voices. In a way, it is a sad statement on these times that the new American dream might be of a society in which people stop screaming at each other long enough to listen to something else. Ok, I had a thread there and have clearly lost it. Must be my good ole modern American attention span.
Maybe I'll reflect more on this later...
On the lighter side, when Obama said the wars in A-stan and Iraq have already cost one trillion dollars, Alex asked, "Dad, is a trillion a real number?"
I responded, "These days boy...I don't know."
posted by edP | 8:37 PM
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