Mayhill Fowler of the Huffington Post: Obamas willfully naive?

BlackFive

Archives

Jim and I had the occasion to meet a very charming lady who writes for the Huffington Post not long ago. I realize the site doesn't enjoy much currency here; but don't hold that against this author, a true Southern lady who merits your consideration. She writes: Aboard Air Force One, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, en gaggle, told the traveling press "not to anticipate any possible announcements or news-making events." Wasn't this just asking for trouble? The President was going to be on Oahu for ten days and eleven nights, at a time when we are ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan, a time when we reasonably might gird ourselves for more mayhem and carnage there and elsewhere. So wasn't the expectation -- even if Obama & Entourage were merely under the influence of that angelic wish for peace on earth -- naive, willfully so? Let us count the news-makers: the hapless attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Northwest flight over Detroit on Christmas Day; the lurching forward of heightened security measures during the rest of the busy holiday travel season; the weekend during which the President did not speak to the American people about any of this, although he did manage a statement on the death of Tuskegee Airman Percy Sutton; instead the visitation of the Ghost of George Bush upon Janet Napolitano during the Sunday talk shows. And then there were the more serious events: the deaths of seven CIA agents three days later in an Afghanistan suicide bombing; the Afghan outcry over the deaths of several boys during a fight between NATO and Afghan forces and the Taliban; the way in which our ally Hamid Karzai pounced upon and further broadcast the rumors that NATO forces had executed those boys; and finally the burning in effigy of Barack Obama in Jalalabad. How quickly in foreign lands our American presidents rise aloft and fall. Barack Obama has not been in office one whole year.... Increasingly, one has to wonder if President Obama and his inner circle understand Islamic fundamentalism. Luckily for us, at least so far the fundamentalists who turn to terror do not get what makes us tick either. In a New Year's Eve press conference, a "Senior Administration Official" said, in reference to the fact that everybody would be working that evening, "Yes, it's a heck of a Happy New Year." Retort from a press wag:"Does it give new meaning to the word ball drop?" We miss that sort of press wag. They were the old fashion, and we could use a few more of them.

Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/3bX3Cw3_s40/mayhill-fowler-of-the-huffington-post-obamas-willfully-naieve.html


Posted Jan 04 2010, 12:59 PM by BLACKFIVE