Obamlet
To troop up or not to troop up: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
Excuse me, just flipping through some Shakespeare and mulling the news, or lack of it, this morning. The ongoing to be or not to be a wartime president thing that is now the news.
Obama looks more and more like Obamlet every day. What makes this unlike a stage drama and more like a courtroom one, though, is that playwrights usually don’t leave the stage empty this long, with the audience hanging around chatting or going out for sandwiches like lawyers waiting for a verdict. Are we supposed to be encouraged or discouraged by the Obama admin’s footdragging on a decision? Some commentary on that below.
What any prosecutor or defense attorney will tell you about jury deliberations … how long they’re out doesn’t necessarily tell you anything.
It could mean they are trying really hard to convince themselves that abandonment will work … and to find a way to convince America and the world that an easy out is the considered, sensible thing to do. Or it could be that they know what they need to do, they are just afraid to do it. Afraid of the consequences of angering their anti-war lefty base, afraid of remaining committed to a war with a horizon past 2010 and 2012. But that’s about as charitable and optimistic a view as is possible, and assumes they actually want to find a way to do the right thing. Unfortunately, there has been little to indicate that is what they are interested in doing.
What makes this less like jury deliberations and more like a Shakespearean tragedy, though, is that every now and then, a major player sticks his head out to shout something. But even that remains confusing. Gates, a company man who has been cautious, publicly declaims against abandoning Afghanistan, a ”strategic mistake.” Hillary Clinton, to her credit, has said more or less the same thing. Meanwhile, Obama in both word and deed has made it pretty clear he thinks both America and America force of arms are the problem and not the solution in the world, and that any lip service he paid to looking tough during the campaign was just one of those things American politicians must do to get elected. You could call that UN speech a “not to be” soliloquy without any “be” in it at all. Biden … a sort of unsophisticated, unimpressive Falstaff; who would take this fool’s counsel? … and key senators have indicated they are fine with that. Meanwhile, it is pretty clear that McChrystal, the counter-terrorism specialist, was placed in command to find the easiest, lightest, most painless way of doing it, and that to his credit, he has already failed in that mission to pointing out that it won’t work.
Meanwhile, the big news continues to be no news. O and his advisors are in no big rush to make a decision. What is interesting here is, though there is some evidence of bickering, there is not much evidence of a deliberative process. They got a military report, but didn’t much like it. There is no study group, the usual means by which presidents buy time, nor a dramatic series of hearings, the usual means by which presidents and Congress debate policy. Which starts to make it sound like they are waiting for something to change and make their decision for them, as opposed to looking to change anything by making a decision. My guess is, they are waiting for American public opinion about the war, the casualties and the Karzai administration to drop more. Rather than exercising leadership that might help change both the negative numbers and any facts and perceptions that fuel them.
So, is Obama turning into Obamlet? The thing about Shakespearean tragedies is that in the end, just like life, they are less about the tragic circumstances and more about the tragic flaws of the characters caught up in them. Obama’s current situation has all the makings of one for the ages, and it may be that his realization of this is what the big holdup is all about. What he decides now will determine the course of his presidency and how it is viewed in history. Of course, Hamlet’s mulling whether to end it all. Obama’s more of a double-reverse Hamlet. He’s hoping he can live on, and avoid the slings and arrows, too, by avoiding taking up arms. What they do have in common is, they both wish their problems would just go away.
One thing’s for sure, he’s no Henry V. Don’t expect a St. Crispin’s Day rant any time soon. “We few, we happy few. We band of NATO allies. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother … ”
He’s no Othello, either. Othello, while tragically misled, was a man of action. Congress makes a pretty good Iago, though.
Some commentary:
Max Boot at the LA Times notes that poll numbers actually favor Obama … compared to Bush when he successfully executed the Surge, leading a reluctant Congress by the nose … and that Obama would do well to stay true to his own rhetoric. Well, yeah, but that assumes he believed it.
Ross Douthat at NYT makes the mistake, along with Lieberman, of thinking what is happening is actually a national discussion about Afghanistan, as opposed to a growing sense of national unease of the sort that easily becomes panic in the absence of leadership. Douthat and Lieberman hope that Obama will recognize that serving American interests serves his own, and that he will morph into a wartime president. Yeah, well, he’d have to believe in it for that to happen.
Herschel at Captain’s Journal notes that they appear to be listening to Colin Powell. Always a bad sign … his trademark “exit plan” requirement ignores the reality of a world in which we remain engaged in almost every one of our prior conflict zones more than 60 years later, where engagement is mandatory and not something to be avoided. Herschel looks at the ups and downs of the “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” airpower issue, and points to a Washington Post snippet from the Kunduz incident coverage, where a couple of local leaders congratulated McChrystal on killing lots of bad guys and asked him to hammer more. The part about John Kerry advocating what he and all the other Dems criticized Bush for … going too light in Afghanistan … is just precious.
O, outrageous slings and arrows! Here’s another, from HotAir, hurtfully:
How often would one imagine that a wartime President, as Commander in Chief, would meet in the first eight months of his term with the overall commander of the theater of war that this President had said was too often overlooked by his predecessor?
Once. Malkin, piling on, adds:
Obama is for “engagement” and “dialogue” with everyone else in the world except his own military commanders.
Rich Lowry at NRO celebrates the Richness of the lefty hypocrisy:
We are experiencing a festival of liberal hypocrisy on the Afghan war, as all the left-wing doves who touted the war as absolutely essential for years back off now that it’s no longer a politically convenient war. Note these lines in Frank Rich’s column today:
Obama finds himself at that same lonely decision point now. Though he came to the presidency declaring Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” circumstances have since changed. While the Taliban thrives there, Al Qaeda’s ground zero is next-door in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
So when did circumstances change? … If you read Rich literally, it must have been sometime between August and today, because Obama didn’t just come to the presidency saying Afghanistan is a necessary war, he said it at the VFW last month … As of May, according to Rich, al-Qaeda was still a threat in Afghanistan.
Tragi-comic relief from John Kerry at the Wall Street Journal, warning against the Vietnam mistake of commiting troops without a strategy. No cruel jokes about Kerry’s own “three scratches” Vietnam exit strategy, please. Also, no cruel jokes about Kerry’s 2004 post-troop commitment Iraq exit strategy presidential campaign strategizing, please. Meanwhile, there’s nothing funny about the fact that, once troops had been committed to Vietnam with a strategy, and that strategy was changed and had become effective, that Vietnam was preciptiously and disastrously abandoned … without a strategy.
Separate matter: A Google search informs that Urban Dictionary refers to “Obamlet” as slang for “a little black person.” That vile, racist usage is not in any way intended here. I prefer to disparage the president of the United States entirely on his own merits or lack thereof.
In prior Obama-Hamlet scholarship from the same search, here’s Sam Schulman in the Weekly Standard:
He deliberately prolonged his youth, avoided responsibility and serious challenges, put his great gifts to work in the tiniest possible ways–all in order to protect his illusions from contact with very much reality. And now, in this particular job, he is up against the real world for the very first time. Obama’s trajectory is Hamlet’s, a youth spent as the recognized, indulged, and inevitable Prince, untrammeled by responsibility or experience. But now he is a character in a play that Shakespeare never wrote: Obama has become the king that Hamlet would have been had he enjoyed the services of Axelrod and Plouffe instead of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Yeah, well that was last March. Never too late late to turn triumph into tragedy. Which is where Neo-neocon, who adds this great art, saw it going then.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” … it’s the famous graveyard of campaign promises scene:
… I knew him, Joe: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that.
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Topics: Afghanistan,Obama
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:49 am Comments (6) on Monday, September 28, 2009
6 Responses to “Obamlet”
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September 28th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Hey, forget all that Afghanistan war stuff. President Me is busy doing the really important stuff… campaigning in Denmark on Thursday to get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
[...] round-up of reax on Obama’s handling of the Obama situation, and himself calls Obama “Obamlet“: *To troop up or not to troop up: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Nice piece!
Obamlet – like so many other tragic characters – fails to understand the lessons of history ( http://www.conservativeblog.thewebinfocenter.com/conservative-blog/three-historical-lessons-to-help-the-president-cope ) And as you note, over time their personal flaws are revealed before the world. It will be very interesting to see how long the formerly main stream media will try and cover up for this President’s naive world view and arrogant treatment of those that disagree with him.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
[...] dismissing the idea of Obama as Hamlet, Jules Crittenden wrote: “He’s no Othello, either. Othello, while tragically misled, was a man of action. Congress [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden examines the brewing Shakespearean tragedy that is Obamlet. [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Very nice. Tragedy, indeed.
To achieve the pinnacle he desired, and be impaled upon it. He has no way off except demonstrating exactly what he’s made of.
One choice abandons the sacrifices made there as pointless, and gives the victory to those who attacked our nation, for the sake of his tattered party and saving what’s left of his presidency. The other choice abandons what’s left of his party, AND his ideology, for a future with no guarantees, but saves almost the only respect remaining to him from independents and conservatives.
Do we think he has the intestinal fortitude to make the difficult choice? How many people can look their ideology in the face and ask themselves the hard questions? Can he admit his leftist concepts can be wrong?
Somehow I don’t expect to be surprised, and I am past disappointment.