Friday, September 13, 2013

Pompous is as Pompous does


I borrowed this style from the movie character Forrest Gump (played by Tom Hanks) who popularized the phrase ‘stupid is as stupid does’ in the movie of the same name, Forrest Gump.
I think the first time I heard the phrase ‘pompous ass’ used was when I was in high school. If so, it was in freshmen English class when we were reading something by Shakespeare. Not my favorite author by any means. I have no idea who Shakespeare was calling a pompous ass nor do I care but I know that I got the meaning of that phrase.

In fact most of the stuff we read or attempted to read that year was not my favorite and was not of interest to me at all. Until I and some others who were in the same position heard the phrase ‘pompous ass’ we were bored. When we heard the words we looked at each other and smiled and realized that Willie S was an ok guy even if we couldn’t understand anything else he wrote.
You might wonder why I bring up pompous ass now.

If you have been following the situation in Syria I think President Obama is putting himself in the position of being a pompous ass.
Originally I think he believed he had the upper hand in Syria regarding chemical weapons and decided to go to Congress for support to attack. His motivation, I believe, was to stick it to the Republicans by requesting Congress to take a vote. He was cruising to what, in his mind, was another victory and he wasn’t going to let the Republicans or the rest of us forget it.

He even sent Secretary of State John Kerry to try to drum up some support (which turned out to be potentially limited) from other countries, mainly our allies, even though the majority weren’t interested in assisting the US in an attack on one side or the other or both. I’m still not sure which it is?
Ultimately Vladimir Putin, Russian President, played Obama by offering a way out for Obama but by keeping Syrian President Assad in power and not allowing the US to do anything in Syria. But hundreds and thousands of Syrians continue to die daily on each side whether by conventional or chemical weapons.

The results to this point: no changes in Syria (Assad is still in power and Islamists are still fighting on the other side and one or both sides have chemical weapons) and the reputation and credibility of both the US and Obama have been reduced drastically. How about Putin and Russia? Their image and credibility have been greatly enhanced and their effectiveness in the entire Middle East has been and will be significantly improved if Obama and the US don’t get their act together.
I don’t know about you but I grew up during the period called the ‘cold war’ and there was an amount of insecurity to life every day during that time. We weren’t sure if we were on track to go to war with Russia (Russia at that time was much larger and stronger than today as it had taken over many Eastern European countries after World War II and was referred to as the USSR) or if we would be attacked or whether we would live another day. In school we even used to have air raid drills where we would hide under our desks or go down to basement hallway thinking we would be protected in the event of a conventional or nuclear attack.

I haven’t had those feelings of insecurity in a long time. But I have them now. With Obama at the helm and his lack of leadership and resolve I do wonder much more about what is going to happen.
A weak leader puts his nation and his people at significant risk. Obama’s pomposity, thinking he is smarter than all of us and can talk his way out of this, puts us all in jeopardy.
 

For more see: Obama Is Lost in the Mideast Bazaar, by Fouad Ajami

Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "The Syrian Rebellion" (Hoover Press, 2012).


 

 

 

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