WaPo, NYT, WSJ agree: Obama speech “ludicrous … uninspiring … disturbing”

◼ Actually, all of those adjectives come from the New York Times — and that’s the most sympathetic take on Barack Obama’s big pivot/comeback speech on foreign policy. - HotAir

◼ 9 Media Publications Slam Obama’s Speech at West Point: ‘Icy,’ Ludicrous,’ ‘Uninspiring’ & ‘Disturbing’ - IJ Review

◼ Emptiness at West Point - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post

It is fitting that on the day before President Obama was to give his grand West Point address defending the wisdom and prudence of his foreign policy, his government should be urging Americans to evacuate Libya.

Libya, of course, was once the model Obama intervention — the exquisitely calibrated military engagement wrapped in the rhetorical extravagance of a nationally televised address proclaiming his newest foreign policy doctrine (they change to fit the latest ad hoc decision): the responsibility to protect.

You don’t hear R2P bandied about much anymore. Not with more than 50,000 civilians having been slaughtered in Syria’s civil war, unprotected in any way by the United States. Nor for that matter do you hear much about Libya, now so dangerously chaotic and jihadi-infested that the State Department is telling Americans to get out.

And you didn’t hear much of anything in the West Point speech. It was a somber parade of straw men...

Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace — to help one party and polish the reputation of one man? As with the West Point speech itself, as with the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all.