Loving's comment:
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Utterly stunning insights Beinart. Your work is extraordinary. Breathtaking. But severely flawed also.
You have the right to imply or state outright that Pr. Obama is a coward, incompetent, sell-out for re-election, whatever, and you've done that here in combination, wittingly or unwittingly. And this all may be the case. But you've not made that case convincingly.
You've not spoken of the totally unprecedented, unexpected GOPig tyranny in the Senate with the treasonous misuse of fillabuster, decimating administration energies, attention, and political capital otherwise reasonably expected that could have been used in the Middle East. You've not spoken of another explanation for his actions - two, severe mis-calculations while he was formulating and stating initial policy: 1. A massive underestimate of AIPACs power, ruthlessness, finances, punctuated with his one personnel blunder, allowing his national security pick, was it, to be stuffed back down his throat within days by AIPAC, et al, and 2. a massive over-estimation of the US Progressives, Left, that they would stay standing with him for years, not nano-seconds, after the election, as turned out to be the case. Worthless, cowardly, treasonous, deadly; punctuated with our total cowering in the face of the Tea Party mob, traitorously letting them take the House, without any resistance at all - unconditional surrender by the spineless, lip-service left. That wasn't the pre-election, or election-night deal.
And a 3rd factor you've not discussed nor ruled out, but rather left out, or conveniently overlooked. And that, is Pr. Obama's long game, that he plays better than anyone we've ever seen. Not in this case?
I fully meant the thanks and admiration for your work, Beinart, at the beginning of this comment. But you owe us, the situation, and yourself, further thought and writing to us on these other points. If Pr. Obama deserves to be so fully discounted and undercut as you've indicated here, so be it. But if it is not deserved, that is an attack you of all people don't carelessly want to leave in place.
