Finally, he spoke and, as almost always, he made more sense than both his political opponents and the blind and blatant racists who just refuse to acknowledge the best in a fellow human being, a fellow American, a fellow child of God, a fellow who has been trusted TWICE, by the majority of Americans to lead our nation, America, the most powerful nation, at this time, in this time, for a long time.
This Sunday, September 28, 2014, in front of the cameras of CBS's 60 Minutes, President Obama answered Steve Kroft's questions or, rather, gave humanity lessons of profound wisdom (along with his remarks at the UN).
As one of the majority of Americans who voted for him twice, I am happy and proud that our president is this extraordinary, deepest thinking, coolest-headed, and tempered-spirit.
Take, for instance, the continuous and simplistic brass-banging made daily by even "liberal" media that embrace and spew whatever "issues" the Obama-hate GOP and others manufacture and "plant" out there. One issue, as Steve Kroft puts it, is that America is "once again... on 'war footing'". In other words, Obama is becoming, a "war president", taking America to war like his predecessor.
No, he is not a "war president", and, no, he's not taking America to war like his predecessor.
Our Thinker-in-Chief explains to us that there are truck-loads and plane-loads-of-troops' difference between "counter-terrorism and the sort of occupying armies that characterized Iraq and Afghan war." Put simply, fellow Americans, what the Commander-in-Chief we've trusted is leading our very able forces to do now "is very different from us having 150,000 troops in Iraq or 60,000 in Afghanistan."
Simplistic thinkers and war hawks who want America to have "boots on the ground" for ISIS-ISIL to be defeated are not the Commander-in-Chief, thank God. The territory that ISIS has occupied is not just "desert", and those people fleeing from ISIS and those being slaughtered by ISIS belong to nations (Iraq, Syria,...) which must put their own boots on the ground, with America's help in equipment and strategy (in Iraq) and America and its allies' air-degrading attacks on ISIS (in both).
There's precedence: After 9/11, the US, using air power without boots on the ground in Afghanistan, had both Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the run and on the brink of total defeat until the US dropped the ball on Afghanistan by starting a war in Iraq - which had nothing to do with 9/11.
On Syria, the simple minded and war hawks declare that if President Obama had either bombed Syria or provided weapons to the opposition, we wouldn't have ISIS today. Again, thank God they are not our Commander-in-Chief. Their one dimensional evaluations and opinions fail to see deep and understand that, as our president put it, Syria is "a contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance."
All the critics see is "if we attack ISIS in Syria we help Assad." Thank heavens our president looks at all facets of the contradiction that is Syria, with its civil war (Sunni-Shiite) that is made more contradictory with the myriads of extremist and even terrorist groups, big and small, on both the Sunni side and the Shiite side, and our president has the sophisticated intellect and vision necessary to navigate America where we do not get bogged down in a quagmire, even when confronted with ISIS in Syria. As President puts it to Steve Kroft, "... there's a more immediate concern that has to be dealt with." America has to balance between Syria's internal contradictions with the "immediate threats to the United States (whereby) ISIL, Khorasan group, those folks (who) could kill Americans." Therefore, for our president, protecting American lives is priority number ONE. Thus, attacking ISIS and the Khorasan group in Syria is this priority.
On the president's low public opinion polls in America:
Two reasons why a president who has accomplished more than any of his recent predecessors has low approval poll numbers: one, the republicans' 6 years' outright distortions, lies, and total negative campaigns spewing total untruths about the state of America and the accomplishments of President Obama.
And two, my Democratic Party is inept in media campaign or in public opinion wars. If a republican president had accomplished 25% of what President Obama has accomplished, Republicans would win these upcoming midterm elections hands down. But Democrats don't fight back or don't fight hard, or else, they don't campaign to tout long and hard the great accomplishments that have been achieved under President Obama.
A rare exception, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has spent some quality time of her show documenting the accomplishments of this president. Unfortunately, she does not run the DNC.
President Obama to 60 Minutes: "When I came into office, our economy was in crisis. We had unemployment up at 10 percent. It's now down to 6.1. We've had the longest run of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our history. We have seen deficits cut by more than half. Corporate balance sheets are probably the best they've been in the last several decades. We are producing more energy than we had before. We are producing more clean energy than we ever had before. I can put my record against any leader around the world in terms of digging ourselves out of a terrible, almost unprecedented financial crisis. Ronald Reagan used to ask the question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" In this case, are you better off than you were in six? And the answer is, the country is definitely better off than we were when I came into office..."
But then comes the destroyer's destructive negating of a positive: "the people don't feel it"... In other words, Americans are constantly being bombarded with the campaign of lies that tells them that "the reality of Obama's accomplishments is not real for you." Hence, the low opinion polls for President Obama.
The lesson: the accomplishments cannot speak for themselves when the opposition has sworn, from the get-go, to deny anything you accomplish and to make you a failed leader even when you have achieved so much. You must fight a negative with 2 positives. You must destroy the lies with a more powerful and sustained attack with the truth, otherwise, lies will win: ask Dukakis and ask one of my heroes, John Kerry...