One note from Obama’s 60 Minutes interview that hasn’t gotten as much attention: here we are, in October 2015, and President Obama believes he can deflect any criticism of his policy in Iraq by citing the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, more than twelve years ago:
If you’re citing the Republican party, I think it’s fair to say that there is nothing I’ve done right over the last seven and a half years. And I think that’s right. It– and– I also think what is true is that these are the same folks who were making an argument for us to go into Iraq and who, in some cases, still have difficulty acknowledging that it was a mistake.
In Obama’s mind, any criticism of his policies from any supporter of the Iraq war is automatically disqualified. And Obama continues the answer, you see the straw man get whacked one more time, as he insists the only option his critics want is to re-invade Iraq again:
And Steve, I guarantee you that there are factions inside of the Middle East, and I guess factions inside the Republican party who think that we should send endless numbers of troops into the Middle East, that the only measure of strength is us sending back several hundred thousand troops, that we are going to impose a peace, police the region, and– that the fact that we might have more deaths of U.S. troops, thousands of troops killed, thousands of troops injured, spend another trillion dollars, they would have no problem with that. There are people who would like to see us do that. And unless we do that, they’ll suggest we’re in retreat.
The entire interview makes clear, Obama’s quite convinced his policies are working, and that he’s a far stronger and more effective leader than Vladimir Putin will ever be: “Well Steve, I got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we’ve got a different definition of leadership. My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris.”