Victor Davis Hanson‘s latest column posted at National Review spells out details of what he labels the Obama Doctrine:
The Obama Doctrine is simple: Proclaim a utopian policy, and then pray that most of the people who hear it are Neanderthals who will ignore it. Having said one thing, doing quite another is not only thereby okay, but also absolutely essential. Keep that paradox in mind, and almost everything the president does makes sense.
In foreign policy, the president demands, in hated George Bush fashion, that Qaddafi leave, soars rhetorically about human rights, seeks an exalted United Nations resolution to protect Libyans, and institutes a no-fly zone — and then hopes that someone goes beyond the U.N. sanction and removes the man President Reagan called the “mad dog of the Middle East” by doing the messy things that we would not. We damn violations of constitutional protections such as renditions, tribunals, Predator assassinations, Guantanamo, and preventive detention — and assume that some rather nasty folk will keep them all going while we look the other way.