This Is Tough?

President Obama may not strut around the deck of an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit, but he has his moments. At a news conference last week he had the following exchange with the Associated Press,

Ben Feller, AP: “Republican candidates have taken aim at your approach to foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East and Israel, and have accused you of appeasement.”

President: “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 al Queda leaders who’ve been taken out of the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever’s left out there.”

So our president’s perception of “foreign policy” is assassination by military incursion into nations with which we are not at war, and by unmanned drone. That’s his response to a question about foreign policy.

Democrats are cheering about how decisive and tough that statement makes him, just as Republicans swooned over George Bush on the carrier’s flight deck. Why do we fall for such dreck? Riding in a jet wearing a flight suit is not tough, and neither is the Mafiaesque telling of a general to, “Go kill that guy and dump his body in the ocean.”