The Washington Post on Obama's Fantasy Foreign Policy: The Progressive Civil War Begins?

An interesting development on Progressive Planet.

The Washington Post editorial board, that decades-long stalwart purveyor of standard American progressive "thought," has had a revelation; it is not exactly equivalent to Saul on the road to Damascus, but it might be akin to Jimmy Carter on the road to political oblivion. I refer to that moment in January 1980, following the prior month's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Jimmy Carter--silver medalist in the Worst President Ever category--angrily announced, "Brezhnev lied to me!"

Poor dear deluded Carter realized at that moment--he seems to have forgotten this since--that the sun did not rise and set at his command; the world did not spin to please him; the solar system did not revolve around Plains, Georgia. He dimly realized that at times foreign leaders do what they think is in the best interest of their countries, and do not comply with the laws of the universe imagined by Washington DC bureaucrats, and "progressive" journalists and academics.

Yes, the Washington Post has SUDDENLY discovered that when it comes to foreign policy, the leaders of Planet Obama might, might just be from Bizarro World. The editorial for March 2 titled, "President Obama’s Foreign Policy is Based on Fantasy" states,

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

Has the WP been reading The Diplomad? It goes on to state,

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

And even,

The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want American “boots on the ground” all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of Iraq. So let’s stipulate: We don’t want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don’t want U.S. troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters, so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple. 

But it’s also true that, as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that’s harmful to U.S. national security, too.

Well good for the Post! A little bit of the light of realism has broken through the progressive fog. That said, and at the risk of being uncharitable, we must note that it is now March 2014, and Mr. Obama, whom the Post backed in two elections, has been President since January 2009. That's over five years. Ukraine is not the first disaster for this President. Those have been coming fast and furious (ahem!) for those five-plus years, and the Post hasn't said much of anything about them. It, in fact, joined in with fellow progressives to deride Palin and later Romney's warnings about Russia. The same editorial board has stayed silent about the IRS targeting of the Tea Party, the abuse of EPA authority to shutdown businesses not friends of the Democrat party, Obama's arming of drug cartels, and the Benghazi massacre. The Post has long supported the global warming nonsense, and, of course, Obamacare and the fantasy world on which that is built, to wit, that there are millions of uninsured or poor Americans out there just dying to get enrolled in some big government sponsored health scheme.

The Post has an infamous history of its own as an active purveyor of progressive fantasy. Its most famous being the Janet Cooke hoax. Cooke, as you remember, was a black reporter for the Post who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning series of reports titled "Jimmy's World" which featured a poor little eight-year-old black boy in the ghetto, so lonely and so desperate that he would shoot up his mom's heroin. The progs loved this story! It confirmed everything they "knew" about life in Amerika! It, of course, turned out to be a total fake, an invention by a black reporter who knew what her white progressive bosses wanted from her. As I have written before, progressives see what they believe. It is thus at home and abroad.

You fight one battle at a time, I guess. So we should be grateful that the Post has gotten a bit of wisdom. One can only hope that this is contagious.