President Obama is taking fire for saying America is a military superpower "whether we want it or not."
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin criticized the remark, saying, "I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C. understand we like to be a dominant superpower. I don't understand a world where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."
What do you think? Is President Obama uncomfortable with America's role as the strongest military power in the world? Does the Left want a weaker America? What about Obama's "apology tour," when he went to other countries and apologized for American "mistakes"? Remember how incensed the Left became when President Bush did his ill-advised "mission accomplished" landing on a naval ship, because they saw it as geopolitical strutting, a sort of "We're number one!"? And remember how quick the Democrats were in declaring that the Iraq war "was lost," almost as if they wished it so?
This is an interesting subject, because there exists on the Left what ranges from an unease to a flat out rejection of "American exceptionalism," the idea that there is something special about America. And there is no denying that the American Left is more at home with the foreign policy approaches of Western European governments, who, with their very weak militaries, have no choice but to seek "consensus" and peaceful solutions to problems with other countries. Unilateral use of force under Bush was viewed as arrogant and jingoist.
I'm reminded of the saying that it's better to be feared than loved. And there's evidence, from their recent rhetoric and policy moves, that nations like Russia and Iran do not fear the U.S. under Obama. They did fear Bush. Although, after 8 years of the Bush doctrine (going it alone if necessary and crushing the bad guys preemptively) the global animosity toward the U.S reached a level that seriously hampered our foreign policy objectives and standing in the world.