DAN HENNINGER: OBAMA’S DANGEROUS CONFUSIONS
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When the President speaks on national security, it is hard to distinguish between personal belief and political calculation.
Then there’s a speech by President Obama on America’s national interests.
Pundits everywhere have been writing that Mr. Obama’s speech last Thursday on terror announced that the war on terror is over. That’s embedded now as the consensus view. What to make, then, of the president’s assertion in that speech that “the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associated forces”? Which is it—war over or war on?
At the end of a long article Tuesday in the New York Times, describing the president’s laborious path to the terror speech’s proposals, one finds this passage: “Even as he set new standards, a debate broke out about what they actually meant and what would actually change.”
The bureaucrats translating the text of the Affordable Care Act are having similar debates about intent and meaning. But there the costs are mostly economic if HHS’s Kathleen Sebelius can’t figure out what she is supposed to do. If the national security bureaucracies are uncertain about a president’s intentions, the costs may be counted in lives.
The day after delivering his thoughts on terror at the National Defense University, Mr. Obama spoke at the Naval Academy’s commencement in Annapolis and then at Arlington Cemeteryon Memorial Day. Those speeches also reflected the Obama technique on matters of war and peace. They combined eloquence, empathy, scapegoating and politics. Listeners the world over may ask: What exactly is he saying to us?
At Arlington, Mr. Obama noted that when he spoke there last year, “for the first time, Americans were no longer fighting and dying in Iraq.” And “this time next year, we will mark the final Memorial Day of our war in Afghanistan.” Not one positive word about either effort.
The three military deaths in Afghanistan Mr. Obama cited were similarly—and oddly—drained of meaning. The first was a woman, a pilot, whose helicopter crashed “during a training mission near Kandahar.” A staff sergeant died three weeks ago “when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.” And another staff sergeant died while escorting a U.S. official to a meeting with Afghan leaders.
There is no point at which Mr. Obama even suggests that the effort of the military who served in these missions was worth it. Indeed, he seems to be saying it wasn’t worth it. Opinion polls suggest some Americans agree, but it is unprecedented for a commander in chief to encourage feelings of failure and defeat.
The graduating Naval Academy midshipmen heard much the same thing.
“Before you arrived here,” he told them, “our nation was engaged in two wars, al Qaeda’s leadership was entrenched in their safe havens, many of our alliances were strained, and our nation’s standing in the world had suffered.” He is saying: The midshipmen who preceded you served under a president, George W. Bush, whose commitments were mistaken or failed. And now, “over the past four years, we’ve strengthened our alliances and restored America’s image in the world.” What strangely conflicting and partisan thoughts for a president to put in the minds of midshipmen headed into service, presumably for all the people of the United States.
He told them about two academy graduates wounded in Afghanistan. The first one “stepped on an IED [improvised explosive device] and lost both his eyes.” The other “lost both his legs” when an IED exploded. Mr. Obama noted that the first individual won three medals at the London Paralympics and the second redeployed to Afghanistan as a double amputee.
It’s a guess, but one doubts that Admirals Nimitz, Halsey or Spruance would have delivered this speech. Nor can one imagine any president in the past 70 years who would have suggested to young military officers at the dawn of their careers that his predecessor sent their peers to perform crap missions from which no good came.
In the near term, the most damaging confusions about the intentions of this presidential mind may spread among antiterrorism officials at the FBI, CIA and defense intelligence agencies. If these bureaucracies believe the war on terror is being redefined away from 9/11, make no mistake: In time, they will redefine their energies, resources and budgets. At the margins of safety, that matters.
The questions about the surveillance of the Boston Marathon plotters, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, (not to mention the pre-Benghazi security omissions) strongly suggested that the intense antiterror effort put in motion after September 2001 needs to be rebooted not redefined.
Reading Mr. Obama’s words on terror and national commitment at the National Defense University, Arlington and Annapolis, it is hard to distinguish between personal belief and political calculation. Maybe he can’t either. For those who still think 9/11 changed everything, a presidency spreading ambiguity about national purpose is unsettling.
Write to henninger@wsj.com
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