POLITICO.COM : No flight suit photo-op or “Mission Accomplished” banner for Barack Obama. - No photo of Obama with his foot on the head of Osama Bin Laden's dead corpse - Romney and Perry Trumpet their Bulliness

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Super Macho Cowboys Romney and Perry treat Obama as a Sissy : -

But Wait : A Gallup poll released last week gave Obama a 53 percent approval rating on handling terrorism and only a 40 percent disapproval rating.

Mitt Romney said of Obama on Libya : “He just has been like a deer in the headlights, not understanding what it takes to put people back to work and even foreign policy, he’s gone from guardrail to guardrail in Libya and Syria.”

Rick Perry said about a Perry administration : “If you’re our enemy, we’re not going to just give you some lip service. If you try to hurt the United States, we will come defeat you.”

POLITICO.COM
The reluctant war president
By ALEXANDER BURNS & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN
August 23, 2011


The reluctant war president


Some excerpts :

“The big picture with President Obama is that he demonstrates that a civilian without military experience can be an exceptional commander-in-chief,” said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who served on the 9/11 Commission.

But Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, noted that Obama “doesn’t particularly define himself as a war president because he’s trying to shift attention to issues that are, in the long term, a lot more important.”

Obama’s Monday statement on the collapse of the Qadhafi regime was a case in point. The president applauded the efforts of the Libyan people, but declined to plant the rhetorical equivalent of an American flag on Tripoli and repeatedly emphasized that the situation there remained “fluid.”

Addressing reporters on Martha’s Vineyard, White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused even to say if the president’s approach to Libya had been vindicated, insisting that he wasn’t going to “play political pundit and sort of assess the winners and losers here.”

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The closest thing to a White House victory lap came from National Security Council official Ben Rhodes, who told POLITICO that the latest turn of events in North Africa “reinforces that the approach we took on Libya was the right one.”

The situation in Libya was often described as a stalemate, but Rhodes said the U.S.-NATO mission effectively made “time work against Qadhafi,” with the deadlocked struggle gradually shifting in the direction of the Libyan rebellion.

“We have a strong record across the board, whether it is taking the fight to Al Qaeda, taking on Osama bin Laden, winding down the war in Iraq, turning the corner in Afghanistan and helping lead an international effort to prevent a massacre in Libya, and to support the Libyan people as they brought an end to the Qadhafi regime,” Rhodes said.

He continued: “This is one more piece of a record that he has been building on national security, that makes a very strong case about his ability to keep the American people safe and advance our interests around the world.”

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Former California Rep. Jane Harman, a Democrat whose support for the Iraq war earned her the enmity of the left, said Obama “has actually, in many ways, been tougher on counterterrorism than President Bush was, and I don’t think that’s widely understood.”

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