Thread: West Point Cadets Give Obama ‘Icy’ Reception At West Point Address

Tale Of The Tape: Cadets Sit For Obama; Bush Has To Ask Them To Sit Down

May 29, 2014 by Personal Liberty News Desk

The half-hearted enthusiasm graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy showed for President Obama has exploded across the Internet in the day since Obama delivered the commencement speech at West Point.

But the tepid greeting, which featured all of the cadets remaining firmly planted in their seats – and an aborted attempt by others in the audience at a standing ovation – appears all the more revealing when set alongside footage from President George W. Bush’s 2008 introduction, when the President had to ask the applauding servicemen to take their seats.

Here’s Obama’s walk-on:



And here’s Bush’s:



The YouTube comments on the Obama video are brutal.

The vastly different reception the two Commanders-in-Chief elicited from the Nation’s future military leaders makes it clear that the Presidency has lost a lot of respect in the eyes of the fighting forces who volunteer to pay, with their lives, to preserve the ideal of freedom.

http://personalliberty.com/tale-tape...-bush-ask-sit/

Obama to West Point grads: It's your task to extend peace and prosperity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=g0C_FvDymfc

Check out the comments at the link:

Susan Rice’s Summation of Obama’s Speech Makes Us Think She Was Watching ‘Price is Right’ Instead

By Soopermexican 8 hours ago



Few people cared enough to watch Obama’s foreign policy “reset speech” on Wednesday, but you might think that NSA Advisor Susan Rice might have been watching “The Price is Right” instead, because her summation of his new policy came out of left field:

Susan Rice ✔ @AmbassadorRice Follow
President Obama's bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will.

10:10 PM - 28 May 2014




I mean, I can’t begin to name all the things wrong with this statement as a description of Obama’s foreign policy. Oh wait, yes we can!

1. Obama specifically said that “American Exceptionalism” is no greater a concept than any other nation’s ideal of exceptionalism, meaning it’s relative and not absolute.
2. Obama has specifically said that America needs to seek out partnerships and do less unilaterally, while filling his cabinet with people advocating America defend its national interests less.
3. Obama has said that America should emulate Europe more in its fiscal and social policies. How do we lead when we’re following the French?
4. During the overthrow of Mubarack’s government in Egypt, Obama dithered away and waited to see the outcome before he would speak out on being on the “right side of history.”
5. The French have led many of the military strikes that Obama has encouraged, including those in Mali and in Libya.
6. Do we really need to bring up Ukraine? Obama has been completely and utterly weak on supporting those disposed to Western liberal democracy in the former Soviet states, which signaled to Putin to do exactly what Rice says Obama is preventing – fill the void of leadership.
7. Even though 60% of Iranians want their government changed, when they rose up against the oppressive tyranny, Obama did nothing to help them, even though Iran supports terrorism and is one of our greatest enemies.
8. How about Obama declaring Al Qaeda is dead and no longer a threat, right before they attacked Benghazi and expanded their presence in Africa and the Gulf region?
9. Is it leadership to declare the War in Afghanistan over and let it fall into chaos, just so that he can put a feather in his cap and thumb his nose at George W. Bush?

And that’s just off the top of my head – we could toss in Venezuela, the South China Sea disagreement, missile defense agreements in Eastern Europe, his hashtag diplomacy, and abandoning Iraq. The entire list is boring and depressing, but it all underscores how pathetic it is for Rice to shamelessly say America has been leading under Obama’s neglect, or that it will start leading.
But hey, keep tweeting those gems, Suzy.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/05/1426...right-instead/

Conservative Daily

Mainstream media give Obama a chillier reception than even West Point gave him...



9 Media Pubs Slam Obama's Speech at West Point: 'Icy,' Ludicrous,' 'Uninspiring' & 'Disturbing'
New York Times, WSJ, Washington Post all pan...
ijreview.com

9 Media Pubs Slam Obama’s Speech at West Point: ‘Icy,’ Ludicrous,’ ‘Uninspiring’ & ‘Disturbing’

By Kyle Becker 11 hours ago


1. Washington Post Editorial Board

“President Obama has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.”

2. New York Times Editorial Board

“President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left. [...]

[H]e provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years, and many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world. Falling back on hackneyed phrases like America is the ‘indispensable nation’ told us little.

The president said he wanted to spend $5 billion to train and support armies in places like Libya, Mali, Yemen and Somalia to combat terrorists. The aim is to avoid having to use American troops, and, in theory, it makes sense. But the United States has a checkered history in such endeavors, and Mr. Obama made only a cursory mention of other factors crucial to success, including responsible governance and education for all. It was disturbing to hear him gloss over the return of military rule in Egypt.” [via Hot Air]

3. Wall Street Journal Editorial

No mention of the Reset. “The reset button has worked,” Mr. Obama avowed in a 2009 meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s figurehead president. That was the same year Mr. Obama announced in Moscow that, “The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over.”

No mention of the Pivot or “rebalance” to Asia. This was billed by Hillary Clinton in 2011 as “among the most important diplomatic efforts of our time” and meant as proof that America’s withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan wasn’t simply a retreat from the world. But as assistant secretary of defense Katrina McFarland admitted in March, following the latest round of Pentagon cuts, “Right now, the pivot is being looked at again, because candidly it can’t happen.”

No mention of Mr. Obama’s Red Line in Syria against the use of chemical weapons…

4. Daily Mail Online

“Receiving tepid applause and a short standing ovation from less than one-quarter of the audience upon his introduction, Obama argued for a contradictory foreign policy that relies on NATO and the United Nations while insisting that ‘America must always lead on the world stage.’

‘If we don’t, no one else will,’ he insisted.”

5. The Guardian

“The promise of a less aggressive American foreign policy comes despite Obama’s increased use of drone assassinations and continued failure to shut the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.

Between the end of the cold war and 9/11, US presidents intervened militarily every 17 months on average, including Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, but Obama said the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq offered the chance of a new approach.”

6. Time

“So, what did Obama accomplish at West Point? It’s hard to say. The White House billed the speech as a response to his growing legion of foreign policy critics. But it won’t satisfy many of them, particularly those who want aggressive U.S. action from Ukraine to Syria to terrorist hotspots like northern Africa. Those critics will welcome Obama’s assurances about American global leadership, but they’ve heard that song from him before and doubt that he truly means it.

Nor was there much reassurance for foreign allies from the Asia Pacific to Eastern Europe who are fretting over the strength of American security guarantees. Obama steered clear of anything that might resemble a red line against aggression by China, Russia or Iran towards their neighbors.”

7. The Atlantic

“An old joke describes the action memos the State Department prepares for the president:

Option A: Do nothing

Option B: Global thermonuclear war

Option C: Preferred State Department policy

On the evidence of President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday, he’d have made an outstanding State Department memo-writer.”

8. L.A. Times Opinion Pages

“The criticisms have gotten under Obama’s skin. He gripes about them frequently, in public and in private. So, with a speech already promised for West Point’s graduation ceremony, he seized the opportunity for a longer, more considered version of his side of the argument.

His core message was familiar and entirely reasonable: The United States needs to remain engaged in the world but should not think of military intervention as its primary tool. ‘American isolationism is not an option,’ he said. ‘The United States is the one indispensable nation,’ the only country capable of organizing big multilateral coalitions to fix big international problems.

But then, alas, the president took aim at a whole battalion of straw men. ‘U.S. military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance,’ he said.”

9. CNN Politics

“Under fire from the political right for what critics call diminishing U.S. global influence, Obama offered a robust defense of his foreign policy as the pragmatic and most effective expression of America’s leadership role in the world.

‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ he said, referring to a tenet of conservative ideology.”

[Special note: In the deceptively edited video, CNN plays propagandistic music behind the president's speech, and ends with the cadets throwing their hats in the air - which was not the end of the president's speech. Neverthless, CNN jabbed the president by using the worst epithet in mainstream media lexicon - "conservative."]

10. CNN Commentators Jim Clancy and Jim Sciutto [via Breitbart News]

“CNN’s international experts gave a lackluster review to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech he gave at West Point on Wednesday. CNN International anchor and correspondent Jim Clancy said the address “was not really a great speech” given where the president was speaking. He described the reception it garnered at West Point as “pretty icy.” Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto added that if “you speak to the leaders of [our allies] there is confusion.”
Sciutto cited the administration’s inaction in Ukraine, and change in position regarding the use of force in Syria.”

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/05/1425...ng-disturbing/

Human Events

"As with the West Point speech itself, as with the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all."



Emptiness at West Point | Human Events
With the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all.
Human Events

Emptiness at West Point



By: Charles Krauthammer
5/30/2014 09:07 AM

It is fitting that on the day before President Obama was to give his grand West Point address defending the wisdom and prudence of his foreign policy, his government should be urging Americans to evacuate Libya.
Libya, of course, was once the model Obama intervention — the exquisitely calibrated military engagement wrapped in the rhetorical extravagance of a nationally televised address proclaiming his newest foreign policy doctrine (they change to fit the latest ad hoc decision): the responsibility to protect.
You don’t hear R2P bandied about much anymore. Not with more than 50,000 civilians having been slaughtered in Syria’s civil war, unprotected in any way by the United States. Nor for that matter do you hear much about Libya, now so dangerously chaotic and jihadi-infested thatthe State Department is telling Americans to get out.
And you didn’t hear much of anything inthe West Point speech. It was a somber parade of straw men, as the president applauded himself for steering the nation on a nervy middle course between extreme isolationism and madcap interventionism. It was the rhetorical equivalent of that classic national security joke in which the presidential aide, devoted to policy option X, submits the following decision memo:
Option 1. All-out nuclear war.
Option 2. Unilateral surrender.
Option 3. Policy X.
The isolationism of Obama’s telling is a species not to be found anywhere. Not even Rand Paul would withdraw from everywhere. And even members of Congress’s dovish left have called for sending drones to Nigeria, for God’s sake.
As for Obama’s interventionists, they are grotesquely described as people “who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak” while Obama courageously refuses to believe that “every problem has a military solution.”
Name one person who does.
“Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” Obama recently and plaintively asked about Ukraine. In reality, nobody is. What actual earthlings are eager for is sending military assistance to Ukraine’s woefully equipped forces.
That’s what the interim prime minister asked for when he visited here in March —and was denied. (He was even denied night-vision goggles and protective armor.) Two months later, military assistance was the first thing Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s newly elected president, said he wanted from the United States. Note: not boots on the ground.
Same for Syria. It was Obama, not his critics, who went to the brink of a military strike over the use of chemical weapons. From which he then flinched. Critics have been begging Obama to help train and equip the outmanned and outgunned rebels — a policy to whichhe now intimates he might finally be coming around.
Three years late. Qusair, Homs and major suburbs of Damascus have already been retaken by the government. The battle has by now so decisively tilted toward Assad — backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, while Obama dithered — that Assad is holding triumphal presidential elections next week.
Amid all this, Obama seems unaware of how far his country has fallen. He attributes claims of American decline to either misreading history or partisan politics. Problem is: Most of the complaints are coming from abroad, from U.S. allies with no stake whatsoever in U.S. partisan politics. Their concern is their own security as they watch this president undertake multiple abdications from Warsaw to Kabul.
What is the world to think when Obama makes the case for a residual force in Afghanistan — “after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains that you have helped to win” — and then announce a drawdown of American forces to 10,000, followed by total liquidation within two years on a fixed timetable regardless of circumstances?
The policy contradicts the premise. If you want not to forfeit our terribly hard-earned gains — as we forfeited all our gains in Iraq with the 2011 withdrawal — why not let conditions dictate the post-2014 drawdowns? Why go to zero — precisely by 2016?
For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan surge was ended precisely in 2012, in the middle of the fighting season — but before the November election. A 2016 Afghan end date might help Democrats electorally and, occurring with Obama still in office, provide a shiny new line to his résumé.
Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace — to help one party and polish the reputation of one man? As with the West Point speech itself, as with the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all.

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/05/3...paign=heupdate