Our boy Conor will stop at nothing in his quest to elevate himself. Now he's enlisted Andy's help in challenging John Hinderaker of Powerline and myself. The Obama video in question is below. You can judge how rude and bumbling he was for yourself.
A more accurate translation of Andy Sullivan's post: Andy, here's a pail of water you'll like. You owe me one a dozen. Halp!
John Hinderaker of Powerline and Dan Riehl are annoyed that Obama side-stepped a question about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings while on his trip to Japan. Conor Friedersdorf confronts them:
How dismaying that a loud subset of the right so consistently demands that President Obama privilege their childish desire for self-righteous rhetoric above the actual demands of statesmanship. What good would it possibly do to tell the Japanese, “Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities”? It wouldn’t do any good. On the other side of the ledger, it would antagonize an allied nation, put its leadership in a difficult spot that might impede its ability to help the United States.
Statesmanship? Has young Conor viewed the tape? If he's the wisest among his liberal submissive subset of alleged conservatives out here, America is in more trouble than I thought. Obama didn't handle the question. The alleged bright new star of American rhetoric had to pretend it didn't exist, as it wasn't in his script. He was rude, performing a perfect display of the very arrogance he claims to want to stop.
Asked whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, President Obama correctly calculated that answering either yes or no would harm American interests, so he gave neither answer, the wisest course available to him, even if it didn’t satisfy the jingoistic vanity of certain critics.
Powerline believes he couldn't answer the question because of what he believes. I said nothing more than that he pretended the question did not exist. There's no statesmanship in that act. Obama could have said, there's no point in debating that history now, we need to move forward. He could have said he regrets those deaths, just as he does the more than 2,000 American deaths at Pearl Harbor and hundreds of thousands of American deaths during all of WW II. But the so-called statesman said nothing, nada, zilch. And this is the fellow they want to anoint as the current champion of American political rhetoric? Why not anoint his speech writers, instead. When put on the spot, Obama doesn't even seem to be able to think, let alone state anything at all.
How pathetic. In fact, though, it's probably just as well Obama didn't say what he really thought. In his speech on nuclear proliferation in Prague, Obama at least suggested that Truman did the wrong thing by bringing World War II to a decisive end:
"And you still won't ever say it to anyone's face. What a coward."
Don't you have a Star Wars convention to go to, sonny? Maybe you need to get some new batteries for your light sabre at Toys R Us. LOL.
Posted by: Bob | Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Bob, thank you for that additional helping of Journolist/Axelturf talking point spam.
2010.
Posted by: O! | Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 02:38 PM
"Don't you have a Star Wars convention to go to, sonny? Maybe you need to get some new batteries for your light sabre at Toys R Us. LOL."
Guess I hit a nerve there, didn't I, Roberta?
Has your daddy changed his skirt recently? You of all people should know - you hide behind it often enough.
I'm still waiting for you and Paul Blart to show up on my doorstep. Guess I shouldn't hold my breath for either of you pansies, hm?
Posted by: Darth Venomous | Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 07:37 PM