An American Lion

Were there any justice, Andrew Sullivan’s blog real estate would be confiscated and given to someone with ability and talent:

My own view is that 2009 has been an extraordinarily successful year for Obama. Since this is currently a minority view and will prompt a chorus of “In The Tank!”, allow me to explain.

The substantive record is clear enough. Torture is ended, if Gitmo remains enormously difficult to close and rendition extremely hard to police. The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound. The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage our war on Jihadism. Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling. The US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a bang - a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops. Iraq remains dodgy in the extreme, but at least March elections have been finally nailed down.

Domestically, the new president has rescued the banks in a bail-out that has come in at $200 billion under budget; the economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year; the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year. A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and probably did more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen. Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent - a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades, impossible under the centrist Clinton, but won finally by a black liberal president. More progress has been made in unraveling the war on drugs this past year than in living memory. The transformation of California into a state where pot is now more available than in Amsterdam is as remarkable as the fact that such new sanity has spread across the country and is at historic highs, so to speak, in the opinion polls. On civil rights, civil marriage came to the nation’s capital city, which has a 60 percent black population. If that doesn’t help reverse some of the gloom from Prop 8 and Maine, what would? And, yes, the unspeakable ban on HIV-positive foreigners was finally lifted, bringing the US back to the center of the global effort to fight AIDS as it should be.

Relations with Russia have improved immensely and may yield real gains in non-proliferation; Netanyahu has moved, however insincerely, toward a two-state solution; Iran’s coup regime remains far more vulnerable than a year ago, paralyzed in its diplomacy, terrified of its own people and constantly shaken by the ongoing revolution; Pakistan launched a major offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in its border area; global opinion of the US has been transformed; the Cairo speech and the Nobel acceptance speech helped explain exactly what Obama’s blend of ruthless realism for conflict-management truly means.

For Sullivan, the world revolves around torture because that must be the one thing he (probably) fears most of all. Fat boys hate getting snuggies, you see. Sullivan probably equates a dutch rub with being set on fire in carefully organized phases. In point of fact, the Obama Administration still does a thing called “extraordinary rendition.” All that means is that we have outsourced our water boarding (except that our “allies” just tear the tendons out of the body, use electricity and battery acid, and delight in watching people twitch and panic).

President Bush, and the men and women who worked for him, have skated.

We are engulfed in a quagmire, and we are watching Pakistan come apart at the seams because we cannot buy a strong man there who will keep the country whole. I guess that if the President looks respectful when he salutes the coffins, things are just fine with the war no one is paying attention to. This is a nation of remarkable ignorance and privilege, and no one understands the suffering of a slice of our population that cannot imagine a life spent in self-centered adulation of their own navel.

The generals have bulldozed the least qualified and least experienced President in this nation’s history. Not only does President Obama have zero credibility with the military, he cannot even fall back on having served in it to maintain some semblance of moral authority. He has fallen for their bullshit harder than Lyndon Johnson ever did. There’s no way to win against an enemy that will simply wait until we have spent ourselves into oblivion.

The banks ain’t fixed. They keep failing and they keep failing to lend people money. The structure is still unsound. No one who knows anything about finance believes the foxes watching the henhouse are finished gorging themselves.

The stock market is, once again, over-valued. The economy is not humming along for people who have seen their benefits run out. Their health care isn’t going to be fixed, ever. Nothing the Congress has done takes effect until quite a few needy people have moved on. As in, have died.

A known pothead bragging that President Obama has made pot available in California is as ridiculous as watching Chad Ochocinco brag about how Twitter has made his game better.

Sullivan also cares about gay marriage and AIDS. Great. All for it. If you live in a broken country where no one has work or health care, you can at least have someone by your side to help you watch everything go to hell. We have done more for people suffering health problems in Africa than we have for people suffering in America. That’s a win? How about helping everyone?

Relations with Russia mean what, exactly? Russia is a barely functioning kleptocracy, fueled by natural gas and oil. Russia isn’t a player anymore. Russia is watching everyone run away from them. Being friends with them is like being friends with the guy who won’t be in high school next year. Any other foreign policy gain Sullivan can cite probably has more to do with Hillary Clinton than a President who prefers speeches and bowing to standing up to tyrants. Yes—Maliki and Karzai are virtual tyrants, and they are guaranteed their power by a President who has conveniently forgotten he was asked to change things.

The only thing that has changed is that Sullivan likes his incompetence, corruption, and ignorance of the rule of law to have Obama’s smile on it. This is what disliking President Bush so much gets us—the same, but different. Guilt optional.