Columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that President Obama has “an adolescent sort of Columbia undergraduate fantasy about the community of nations” and that his belief about the arc of history justifies in action on Monday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
Krauthammer said, “we really are in a pretty dangerous spot when our president, after seven years, is delusional about what’s happening in the world. Let’s take — I mean, it’s hard to know where to start but where he said who’s going to take on ISIS? And he said, oh yes, ‘the community of nations’ will take it on. The community of nations doesn’t exist. What is he talking about? The UN? What is he talking about, the Nobel Peace Prize committee? Or maybe he means the International Olympic Committee. They’ll send in a javelin team against ISIS. This is an adolescent sort of Columbia undergraduate fantasy about the community of nations.”
Krauthammer added, “imagine that you’re one of the remaining Free Syrian Army guys…out there, who are being absolutely wiped out by Russian air power right now, and as they die, their consolation is to think that as Obama said, you know, after all the Russians only have two allies here, Iran and Hezbollah, and he’s going to die knowing that Belgium is with him. I mean, this is a president who’s living on a different planet, but it’s not harmless. People are getting killed. And worse than that, the people who are getting killed, this is a civil war, it would happen without us, but the people who are getting killed now, by Russian arms, are people who trusted us, were trained by us, and depended on us, and the message to the entire Middle East, to the Saudis, to the Israelis, to the Jordanians, to the Egyptians, who have depended on us to have their back for now 50 years, they look at a president who is delusional about what’s happening, and thinks that he’s actually winning in this region.”
Krauthammer also argued, “I think he has a theory of history…he repeats the line from Martin Luther King the arc of history is long, but it tends towards justice. He does believe, and he’s said this in many of the UN speeches, he said…that ‘control of territory’ really doesn’t matter in the 21st century. He said power ultimately dissipates. He is right, that in 100 years Assad will be gone. So, he doesn’t really have to do anything, and the Russians are just wasting their time, and incurring a lot of costs. But in the meantime, a few generations, a lot of people are going to die, and American influence will erode, and the Russians, and the Iranians, and the bad guys, and the jihadis are going to be in control of swaths of the world. There are going to be all kinds of other kinds of calamities. But, he has a theory that in the end, in the 21st century, somehow when the calendar changed in January 2000, the world altered itself, and after thousands of years of countries determining their future by power, and whether they were strong enough to defend themselves, that no longer applies, and the community of nations now is going to take on the likes of ISIS. He seems to believe this, and I cannot — I can imagine what they’re thinking in the capitals of the world, can the president on the strongest power on earth truly have this kind of adolescent view of the world? This kind of ultimate idealism, totally detached from reality, that it really doesn’t matter. When Ukraine was invaded by the Russians, what did Obama say? His policy was to offer Putin a face saving off-ramp to save him from this calamity. He imagined you go in Crimea it has to end badly. It doesn’t.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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