Anlyzing Dr Pipes first pick from Obama's speech - search for america or USA in the full text

Submitted by myth (Germany), Dec 12, 2009 at 17:38

"I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars." Let me analyze what Obama says here and contrast it to what would come close to reality: As president of the USA he is commander-in-chief. When he says "I am" this sounds like someone assigned this job to him personally, now that is not the case. Certainly he is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, not the nation, if anything one should expect the most powerful armed forces on the planet, being Commander-inChief of the US military is exceptionally powerful. Then he says "nation" which is a deliberate abstraction, given that he should talk about the *american* nation. "in the midst" again is inaccurate. The USA is clearly one side to both wars. Following Dr Pipes I assign Afghanistan war1 and Iraq war2. Can he really say "in the midst" when the USA entered the first in defense and the second on their own initiative ? Let me conclude Obama's message from this: In this one line Obama denies the supremacy of the US armed forces and the mandate from the american people. It is he who has the authority and capacity to act in the matter. There is no connection between those two wars (which would be Dr Pipes war3) and the USA has neither a goal nor a motivation to be in them. This lead me to a test. Maybe if I searched for keywords I would no long expect from an american president, who knows: I did not read all of Obama's speech but I applied the search functionality of my browser. Search for "america": nothing. Search for "usa" and you hit "crusade", you do not hit "usa"

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