Obama's leadership skills are lacking.
In response to Ryan Lizza's must-read piece on Obama's foreign policy for the inclusion of several jaw-dropping anecdotes, Elliott Abrams offers a series of devastating critiques. One in particular stood out to me:
'Many critics have argued that the Obama Administration seemed annoyed when Iranians rose up in June 2009 after the elections there were stolen. It appeared that the President was set on engagement with the ayatollahs, and was not at all pleased to see Iranians demanding freedom. Now we have it from someone who served in the Administration: â??The core of it was we were still trying to engage the Iranian government and we did not want to do anything that made us side with the protesters.â? In the annals of American human rights policy, the phrase â??we did not want to do anything that made us side with the protestersâ? will hold a special place of dishonor.'
This is indeed disturbing. Abrams notes a later quote, where â??One of his advisers described the Presidentâ??s actions in Libya as â??leading from behind.â??â?Â
'It strikes me that if a critic of the President had so described his foreign policy, that critic would be accused of sarcasm and disrespect. But as Lizza writes, that summary â??does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding.â?Â'
This word, "leading" - I do not think it means what you think it means.