"Obama is changing the direction of global gravity"

[impik]

....He is also confronting Iran without the shallowness of bombing vs. sanctions vs. public humiliation that his administration has been flirting with. In the past week, and over the next month, Obama is showing what a U.S.-led world order should look like.

This is a huge shift, for the world hasn’t had much faith in America’s abilities to deliver. For example, in taking on strategic challenges like getting the Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state pathway; or ending the anachronistically simmering Cold War conflict in U.S.-Cuba relations; or persuading Iran to forgo a nuclear weapons track, most of the world has seen an America unable to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.

In recent years, this has translated into a sense that the United States is a well-branded, globally important but underperforming country, whose influence is weakening — more like a national version of General Motors than Google.


Now, out of the blue, Obama is changing the game.....

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35691.html#ixzz0l1MVngaj

[FrenchieCat]

1. "change" whether some like it or not is exactly what is happening.....

even those who want to insist that there's no difference between the two parties
don't have no choice but to shut their piehole. Good!

[Cha]

2. Yes, he's changing the game

alright. So glad we have him as President.

[ShortnFiery]

3. I'm sorry, that was not my interpretation at all.

IMO, the bombings are a coming was a very strong chorus that IMO, any thoughtful human could read in between the lines.

I fear we are on the same path to war like we were with the Iraqi invasion.

President Obama has "a different style" but I sense that either we or Israel will bomb Iran in the not too distant future.

[SwampG8r]

7. israel ...and before summer

[vaberella]

4. I couldn't agree more. n/t

[laststeamtrain]

5. "Obama is changing the direction of global gravity"

But only God can make a tree. :rofl:

[Clio the Leo]

6. kick! NT

[Hekate]

8. Kick and Rec. That hopey-changey thing is working pretty well for me about now. nt

[Hekate]

9. Page 2 of the article has this to say about Biden and Gates...

Very thought-provoking, and as far as Gates goes, counter to what many DUers have to say about him. It also shows the influence of Biden, which is as good as we had hoped it would be.

Hekate

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35691_Page2.html

Obama has made a Faustian bargain in this new review. For he is allotting more financial resources to U.S. labs for maintenance and modernization of the current weapons stockpile, while pulling the plug on new weapons development.

Vice President Joe BIDEN should be given the credit for this crucial deal, which kept the national security right from mugging the president during the process.

Finally, Obama has signed a historic strategic arms reduction treaty with the Russians. This reverses the erosion of a relationship that — like the U.S.-China relationship — is crucial to virtually all the administration’s goals.

The primary reason driving Defense Secretary Robert GATES to stay on in the administration was to reconfigure U.S.-Russia relations. It had become so riddled with suspicion that Russia may well have vetoed any U.S. progress on the Iran front.

Senior Russian officials tell me that the tag team of Gates on the military side and Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher on the diplomatic front changed the climate from unproductive mutual skepticism and hostility to pragmatic respect. And this may now lead to new collaborations. >snip<