The Crittenden take on Obama's speech at West Point*

He says “we” a lot in talking about the success in Iraq, never once saying, as he so often does about things he doesn’t like, that it was inherited. Which is odd, because success in Iraq, as well as the containment of al-Qaeda in the greater war against Islamic extremism, is the one thing he most definitely inherited without having lifted a finger in aid of it.

Think about it. The West Point class of 2010 is made up of cadets who had the guts to commit themselves to combat leadership, who believed in their country even at the lowest depths of that bitter war, when the media and the pols — half of them anyway — were screaming “Get out! Run! Devil take the hindmost!” You’d think the president who sought to crate a new Vietnam in Iraq would approach Americans like the West Point Class of 2010 with a little more humility. Gotta hand it to him. The man’s got gall.

Here’s a line he might have tried: “I really have no business standing here lecturing you, when there is so much you could teach me. About service to one’s nation. About what any one of us might dare to do, to be a positive force for the future of this world … ” Something like that.


*Where, if there were justice, he wouldn't be allowed to set foot