Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, the authors of The 9/11 Commission Report faulted America for failure of imagination. Our politicians have now remedied that. Imagination has become the calling and the cause of current U.S. politics.
We have a president who imagines he can keep this country safe by reaching out to Syria, haggling with North Korea and Iran, winking at Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and smiling at Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Washington is rife with politicians and pundits willing to entertain the idea that if America withdraws in defeat from Afghanistan, there will be no hell to pay.
Imagination now tells us that with the help of the United Nations, the politicians of the world can fine-tune the climate and the tides. Imagination says there can be state-planned healthcare for all, but rationing and deficits for none. Imagination says America can be centrally planned, but free; nanny-state, but strong; apologetically appeasement-driven, but secure. Imagination has reduced “war” to “overseas contingency operations,” and imagination posits that – Afghanistan apart — what remains of those overseas contingency operations can mostly be fought and won through the U.S. courts.
Meanwhile, the alarms are clanging. Signs are that Iran will soon be rolling out nuclear bombs. North Korea has already run its second nuclear test. New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau goes to Washington to warn an unheeding administration that a fast-rising “axis of unity” between Venezuela and Iran is on a path leading toward nuclear-tipped missiles in America’s “backyard.” Pirates, and freighters stuffed with North Korean weapons, ply the seas. Al Qaeda digs into Africa. Russia and China blaze the way toward a world order in which ruthless autocracy outranks democracy, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman sees a certain charm in the idea. Later this month, an extraordinary parade of swaggering and emboldened tyrants — including Qaddafi, Chavez and Ahmadinejad– will arrive in New York to share the UN stage with the U.S. president who has already shaken hands with two of them, and wished happy new year, on webcast, to a third.
We don’t yet know on what date, precisely, the next terrible fruition of all these realities will rudely interrupt Washington’s orgy of imagination. For now, for a place marker, call that date Sept. 12th. In the reports that will later be written, it won’t be failure of imagination that should figure large. Rather, failure of cognition, and of will.
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17 Comments
1. Pajamas Media » The September 12 Failure of Cognition:[...] Read the entire story here. [...]
Sep 12, 2009 - 7:17 am 2. Theo Goodwin:Isn’t Obama signalling all of our enemies that aggression will not bring a serious push back? It’s sort of like he’s saying “I will make an ineffective response and then we will dialogue it in the Security Council.”
Sep 12, 2009 - 9:43 am 3. Mike S.:Ms. Rossett:
Sep 12, 2009 - 9:51 am 4. don:I actually think you are being far to kind… or diplomatic. The President of the United States should have an instinctive revulsion to a malignant clown like Hugo Chavez. That our President does not speaks volumes.
“Afghanistan apart?” You really think the current President and all his men and women are really committed to “winning” in Afghanistan, the “good war”? Surely you jest? They don’t even call it war anymore. The “good war” was a political fiction for campaign purposes. A President and party that views the current enterprise from a civil society, rule of law prism while operating from the position that our current troubles are really the fault of Americans are not serious players. That Islam has a point while Americans are the ethnocentric problem and the cause of “injustice” in the world is the current administration’s standard operating procedure, and fantasy. Democrats will ram through a “public option” trojan horse” for health care and, as in the early 70″s unwinding of the Vietnam War era, ram through defunding for fighting the current era of Islamic “man made natural disasters.” Of course, the military “defeat” will be blamed on Bush rather than congressional democrats; just as with Nixon’s negotiated peace ending the Vietnam War that democrats underfunded and failed to support. Back then the democrats were afraid of China, today they’re afraid of Iran and Pakistan–Chinese allies.
Sep 12, 2009 - 11:25 am 5. Bohemond:Don: Agreed. This lowlife ordered our troops to undertake an offensive in Afghanistan with only half the number required, and told them flat out they would get no reinforcements. It was designed to fail. Designed!
And today we learn that 3 Marines and 9 Afghan soldiers were killed, and many more wounded, thanks to Obama’s pantywaist Rules of Engagement.
Sep 12, 2009 - 2:48 pm 6. rrbs:Most of the liberals I know don’t care about NK, or Iran having Nukes, They seem to think if we get nuked we will just take them out with ours since we have so many. However, they do not want us building missile defense or testing our arsenal either. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Sep 12, 2009 - 4:12 pm 7. annie:Obama needs to be watched… Honduras’ interim president, Roberto Micheletti, says the United States has revoked his diplomatic and tourist visas.
He said that he and several cabinet members had their visas revoked to protest the coup.
Guess Obama is trying everything possible to help Chavez and the boys get what they want… We are in bed with snakes..
there is a story about a snake and a bunny that reminds me of Obama..
The bunny wanted to go across the river and the snake said hop on my back and I’ll take you across. The bunny said “no, you will bite me”…the snake said “I promise not to bite you”…so the bunny hopped on …half way across the river the snake bit the bunny AND tried to eat it…the bunny said “you promised!!” the snake said…”I lied”… The is the story of OBAMA…. stupidly America believed…and obama lied…
Sep 12, 2009 - 5:35 pm 8. e:It seems to me that we need to elect Dick Cheney as president in 2012. One glare from him and these problem nations will straighten up immediately.
Sep 12, 2009 - 7:42 pm 9. David P:The inescapable haunting frustration’s that these debilitating steps are only the beginning and the worst has yet to come.
Sep 12, 2009 - 9:14 pm 10. RAF:It’s time to look into the funding of these nuts and cut where it hurts. The ACORN illegal activities are heating up and there may be enough momentum now to at least start taking apart the funding. Check out ACORN-8 website, readup and start getting vocal with state legislation to stop taxpayor funds going to criminal organizations.
Sep 13, 2009 - 7:05 am 11. Wynne:On the odd occasion I encounter an essay that I regard as near-perfect. In content and style (and, yes, imagination) this piece by Claudia Rosett is an example.
Sep 13, 2009 - 8:46 am 12. deguello:Nice picture of two of the biggest donors to the democratic party!
Sep 14, 2009 - 8:16 am 13. Kate Rafferty:The president has a degree from Harvard not the Uni of Idaho. Can he be so lacking cognition?
Sep 14, 2009 - 9:13 am 14. SteveB/Colorado:Worse question. Are his foreign policy results not a failure but his desire?
#5 Bohemond: “this lowlife ordered our troops to undertake an offensive in Afghanistan with only half the number required….” Sounds like Bush/Cheney in Iraq in 2003.
Conservative columnist George Will has made the case for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Amazing that some on the right, however, think the USA can accomplish what the Soviets and British failed to do: pacify unruly tribes in a mountainous terrain.
We’d accomplish far more by ending the war on drugs; legalizing pot & coke & taxing them; and thus deprive the Taliban of their most lucrative market.
Sep 14, 2009 - 6:12 pm 15. Steynian 383 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] THE SEPTEMBER 12th Failure of Cognition …. [...]
Sep 15, 2009 - 5:51 am 16. David W. Lincoln:Yes, Claudia, failure of will, just like the line given by Burt Lancaster in “Judgment at Nuremburg”, which was followed by Werner Klemperer shouting, “traitor, traitor!”
I have a request, would you devote some time to how those with cojones can get to the bottom of the dealings of the World Bank and the IMF? Because the deformed souls who have lulled the followers of Gramsci into being accomplices to evil, they are throwing money around, and I suspect that money is far from being squeaky clean.
Thanks.
Sep 18, 2009 - 12:16 pm 17. chip:rrbs, et al.
Ask your liberal friends if they expect some type of liberal immunity if we get hit or worse. A free pass.
Sep 19, 2009 - 12:08 am