"We Don't Have A Strategy Yet"

Barack Obama's audacity of hope, revisited

On July 27, 2004 then Illinois state senator and U.S. Senate candidate, Barack Obama, delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. That speech, "The Audacity of Hope," propelled the unknown Obama to rock star status in the Democratic Party. The speech's title had been borrowed from a 1990 sermon from Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In that speech Obama stated, "The audacity of hope! That is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; the belief in things not seen; the belief that there are better days ahead."

Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and in October of 2006 he released his second book, "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." It quickly rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. The book embellished the themes of his keynote address and laid the foundation for what would become his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 against the presumptive nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

And then Obama surprised everyone, especially Clinton. Her Achilles heel turned out to be her vote in favor of the Iraq war. Obama won the nomination and the general election. The time had come for him to turn the promise of the audacity of hope into reality.

In June of 2009 President Obama spoke to the Muslim world in a speech delivered at the University of Cairo. He opened his speech by saying, "I come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based on mutual interest and mutual respect." And he closed it saying, "We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning."

However, less than six months later in December of 2009, the President addressed the cadets at West Point and said, "As Commander-in-Chief I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months our troops will begin to come home." There it was a foreign policy of escalation and withdrawal in back-to-back sentences!

Since then, the United States has been surprised, humiliated, out-thought, and outfoxed by breathtaking events and by our adversaries in the Middle East and Russia. The Obama administration was caught off guard by the upheaval brought about by the Arab Spring that engulfed the Arab World beginning in late 2010. Rulers were swept from power in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen.

Our relations with our longtime ally, Israel, have sunk to their lowest point since the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. Secretary of State John Kerry has not been able to broker a permanent agreement in the armed conflict between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip, let alone a two-state solution between the parties.

In Libya, the Obama administration did not anticipate the consequences of their removal of Muammar Gaddafi. Libya is now a failed state and a breeding ground for jihadists. Regarding our 2011 Libyan intervention, Obama told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on Aug. 8, "I think we (and) our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force."

Our armed forces are leaving Afghanistan after 13 years with precious little to show for our sacrifice. It remains a failed state, largely controlled and terrorized by the Taliban.

In Syria's ongoing civil war where more than 200,000 have perished and millions have fled the country, Obama established a red line and then ignored its being crossed.

Since our troop withdrawal, Iraq has descended into a religious civil war. And now the specter of ISIS has spread across much of Syria and Iraq. In an interview with the New Yorker last January, Obama dismissed ISIS as a jayvee team. He said, "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant." Last month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel described ISIS as an "imminent threat to every interest we have (and) this is beyond anything we've seen."

Obama's foreign policy has been a colossal failure. It has not been audacious. It has not offered hope. Why do you think former Secretary of State Clinton has begun to distance herself from it by saying, "Don't do stupid stuff is not an organizing principle." It's just the beginning of her effort to put light between herself and the audacity of failure.

LeRoy Goldman is an unaffiliated voter who lives in Flat Rock. He can be reached at:  EmailMe

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