Camille Paglia On Obama

From Salon:

Dear Camille,

I am amazed at the easy pass you still give the Obama administration. You continue to excuse his blunders and misses as the result of a lack of experience and bad advisors.

Many of Obama's policies have been a scary continuation of the worst ideas of the last year of the Bush administration, while undoing some of the few things they got right.

You have been hitting that note about the need to shake up his staff for quite a while. Yet isn't it true that people tend to surround themselves with like minds? You said recently that "I am hopeful that he will rid himself soon of these simplistic anti-American clichés." Has it occurred to you that maybe that is just who he is and the people he surrounds himself with are just a reflection of himself?

I see Obama and his presidency as the crowning of the ideas of that northeastern liberal aristocracy you so much criticize. He appears to me as a cliché of all their pathologies, and yet you seem infatuated with him. You continually praise his speech and demeanor while to me it seems like a mask for his lack of substance. I find him to be a man of an oversized ego, with a messianic complex and a cult-like following, which would not be so scary if he didn't wear the media as his own personal lap dog.

As a person born and raised in Latin America who studies history as hobby, I can't help but see President Obama as the closest thing we have had in this country to the long line of populist leaders who have been the scourge of Latin America for decades and sent many of us here into exile. He is not a Chavez-like figure who uses vulgarity and threats as a weapon but a more sophisticated version of a young Peron.

Hermes Diaz

Miami

Yes, ever since week one of the Obama administration, I have been doggedly calling for heads to roll. As months of crass ineptitude drag on, however, the blacklist of those who should be tagged for the guillotine gets longer and longer. The most recent fiasco, of course, was sending the president of the United States on a humiliating fool's errand to beg for the Olympics as a Chicago boondoggle. I cheered when splendiferous Rio de Janeiro rightfully got the gig.

You are correct to argue that the cluster of appointees around a person in power reflects his or her belief system and modus operandi. However, it is a mark of leadership to recognize the need for professional evolution beyond an old comfort zone. Obama is approaching a turning point which will define his political future, if he has one. He is surrounded by some mighty small potatoes who need shoveling into the dumpster. The petty provincials need to go, and far more sophisticated and world-savvy analysts must urgently be brought on board.

Opponents of Obama are perplexed by the disconnect in polling between Americans' rejection of Obama's policies and his personal popularity. Count me among those who are very critical of many of Obama's actions or evasions but who continue to like him and to believe in his potential as a world leader. It's true he has accomplished nothing thus far and did not remotely deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, a gift carrying a terrible curse. The Nobel should have been the crown of Obama's career and not the butt of jokes. Yet the award has tangible significance insofar as Obama has endorsed the humanistic (if unrealistic) dream of a world without nuclear weapons. The lion may never lie down with the lamb, but politics will always be mired in seething, selfish squalor unless idealistic leaders appeal to our higher nature.

Hey, I'm a soldier and have been one for 30 years. My son is a soldier too. I have been deployed to the Iraqi theater, and my son is deployed to the Afghani theater. These are my credentials.

I understand your opposition to Iraq and Afghanistan in an intellectual sense, but I probably am tribal, too, and can't understand it in an emotional sense. Here is my take from one who has been there and has someone I love still there. I agree the stated reasons we went to Iraq were in error, but the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan have one redeeming feature. The people we are fighting are tribal. All the nuts and haters are flocking to Iraq and Afghanistan to throw us out and kill us. That is excellent, and here is why.

If you look at the terrorist attacks against American target statistics for the 10 years before the Iraq "incursion" and then look at the statistics since, you will find a significant drop. I believe this is because all the crazies are attacking us in Iraq and Afghan, along with the disruptions we are causing their planning cells. While I personally dislike being shot at and targeted for high explosives (from personal experience), I much prefer that to people targeting my family at home. Here's why. In the field I have weapons and support. When the other guy comes along, he is neither trained, equipped nor supported as well as I. In the majority of cases, he dies, not me. Look at the comparative death rates in the attacks in those prior ten years and now. We are killing more of them now than they are of us. In the field, we are prepared; in a terrorist attack, we are not.

Anything that reduces that is good, in my opinion.

By the way, I personally think fighting and killing are a waste of energy and treasure, but I am not going to stand aside while some other idiot who doesn't believe as I do goes around killing my people.

Take care--

Bill Gasaway

Forest Park, GA

Thank you very much for your family's selfless service to our nation. U.S. forces, with international cooperation, have concretely succeeded in major disruption of jihadist communications and training camps. But I remain skeptical of the "flypaper" theory of terrorism, which alleges that bad guys around the world have flocked to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight the U.S. incursions. Exactly what evidence is there of such a migration of outsiders? This viewpoint underestimates the degree of active indigenous resistance to the American presence, including among citizens who might not otherwise be politically engaged or attracted to Muslim extremism.

Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. However, I want the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and I oppose the costly maintenance of U.S. military bases all over the world. Let Europe, for example, pay the price of its own defense and stop leeching off of us. Except for naval and air exercises, our military should be stationed on American soil, where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends. With advanced satellite technology that can read the street number on a house, why are we still locked to outmoded theories of warfare predicated on the cumbersome transport of battalions and materiel?

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation. In many long-embattled regions, there are internal processes at work that simply must play themselves out. We are overextended abroad and committing financial suicide at home. The escalating national debt is our enemy within. Fanatical jihadism will continue to be a tactical problem, but its attacks, however devastating, will always be sporadic and local. Jihadism cannot destroy the U.S. But our own reckless politicians, spending us into oblivion and servitude to China, can.