The Hubris and Incompetence of Barack Obama

Leadership is hard.  Harry Truman wasn’t the best president ever, but at least he knew his job. 

When it came time to decide in 1945 after the Potsdam Declaration, "Bomb or No bomb," he made the call and did the right thing, which was a very hard thing.  When General MacArthur and he began to have significant differences of opinion on policy and operational conduct, he did the hard thing and relieved MacArthur.  In both of these cases, he dealt with extraordinary pressures and demands and through it all, still made a decision.

Contrast that with what comes from the Occupant in Chief; lots and lots of "I just learned about this the same time you did" followed generally by "It was/wasn't a youtube video"  "It was (insert policy maker/leaders' name here) decision"  followed closely by not doing anything of significance or involving competence and then pivoting to solving the student loan crisis.

My guess is that Barack is going to say he learned about all of this Al-Qaeda movement from the media.  At least, that will be his excuse.  Might be a good one, since he doesn't attend his daily briefings. 

Fox News has poses the question of whether or not this administration was "taking a nap" on this current rollback of freedom in the Middle East.  I would say that is the understatement of the century.

This is what “leading from behind” without any leadership experience at all combined with the view of an unenlightened academic who was put in charge by the unintelligent looks like.  This is the picture of incompetence, combined with a dangerous soup of a lack of forethought and foresight and an inability to make any decision regarding anything more complicated than ordering lunch.

This is not the failure of Bush, as much as the trolls and the uninformed want to hope and wish that it is; this is the failure of Obama.  Failure.  Utter and complete failure as a leader.  Failure on so many levels that I can’t even mention them all.  All this guy had to do was negotiate a SOFA so that we could secure any gains made in Iraq and build a lasting peace.  That was it, work with our allies to tie up the loose ends.  Instead, he tied his shoelaces together and now, we get to watch as ISIS and Al-Qaeda drive heavy equipment into city after city in Iraq.  Cities that good men and women bled and died in.

So much has been undone by the actions of this feckless horse’s ass who talks out of both sides of his mouth and means none of it, along with his incompetent handmaidens in his administration working hand in hand with the "Amen Chorus" that is the state run media to try to convince everyone how bad is good, up is down, and enemies are friends. 

Thanks Barack.  Scientists can't measure how awesome this is.  Maybe you should head to Baghdad and read them a copy of your Cairo speech.  I am sure ISIS will be impressed.

Hubris and narcissism are arguably the two largest failings of a leader.  This president has them both in such abundance that even his friends and allies can no longer tolerate him, his polices and his decisions.  They know, even with their stupid politics that ultimately, leaders take responsibility, they don’t spend their time excuse making and blaming anything bad that happens on Youtube videos, the other party in Congress, or farming it out to another senior leader and saying “it was his decision.” 

It is too high a bar I guess to expect him to know that leaders don’t blame fix blame, they fix the problem.

There are so many parallels of the past here that they are crashing into each other.  The march of so many enemies, so many failures and so many excuses.  It is starting to look like a bad combination of 1913, 1933, and 1950 all rolled into one giant exploding excrement pile that is going to cover most of the free world.   

These years of my life are turning out to be the worst of them as a veteran.  I never understood the anger of the Vietnam veterans and their generation until I was older and watching what is happening now.  It puts many things about that time into perspective.  This must be exactly what veterans of the Vietnam War felt like.  All of our friends and comrades killed and maimed so that Iraq could have to opportunity to live as they choose, even if we didn’t agree with 100 percent of it, and now we get to live long enough to watch all that they fought and died for evaporate before our eyes.

Mosul 2014 looks like Da Nang in 1975 and Baghdad 2014 is starting to look a whole lot like Saigon in 1975.

There is this sickness in my stomach watching what passes for leadership in my country do what they are not doing.  I keep hoping that I am going to wake up and find it was all a terrible nightmare.

Watching this happen makes me angrier and sadder than I have ever been.

Thanks to Blackfive and Mark Scott