Samantha Power: Nah, Obama Doesn’t Listen to Robert Gates Anymore

Sure, the headline may be slightly provocative, but she might as well have said it, right? President Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power was rolled out to appear on a trifecta of Sunday news programs this weekend, and she didn’t really offer anything new as it relates to the administration’s oftentimes (or always) confusing strategy to combat ISIS.

You may recall that just a few days ago, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated his belief that the president has “trapped himself” by ruling out boots on the ground, and that’s pretty damning coming from him. The last time we saw Gates publicly dissing Obama, he mysteriously showed up the next day wearing a neck brace. So, he should probably “brace” himself for something unpleasant to come his way once again.

Or perhaps it already has, in the form of Samantha Power. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about the former Sec Def’s indictment of the Obama strategy, Power was fairly direct. “The president is relying on military advice from Chairman Dempsey and from Secretary Hagel,” she said. “They believe that the strategy that the president has laid out can be successful.” In other words, Obama is listening only to the people who are telling him that his ideas are great. Sounds like a strategy for success.

But how about that blink-and-miss-it dismissal of Robert Gates’ opinion, as if he’s just some random schmohawk on the street? Ouch. I guess once you leave Barack Obama’s inner circle, your opinion no longer matters. But if his people were smart, those opinions WOULD matter, as the president has instead continued making the same mistakes over and over again. Isn’t insisting that there will be “no combat troops” in Iraq a lot like insisting that Syria would pay a price if it crossed his “red line”? Isn’t it similar to his empty threats against Vladimir Putin? It’s these definitive pronouncements Obama repeatedly makes that seem to get him into trouble time and time again. It’s not even that far removed from “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” This president seems to think he lives in the pre-YouTube era of the 80’s and 90’s when you could almost get away with this kind of thing. But the world is watching here, and the world is testing him. So far, he’s failed most of those tests…and he’s done so because he continually doesn’t follow through on his words, or he never intended to in the first place. In either scenario, it’s weak sauce.

Besides, what is Barack so worried about? It seems to me that he has the undying support of prominent Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz no matter what he does. If he announced tomorrow that he’s decided to turn the fight against ISIS into a full-scale second invasion of Iraq, Nancy and Debbie would find a way to defend him and claim it’s completely different than the Bush Doctrine. Yet, Obama is so fearful of actually listening to military advisers and angering the anti-war Left that he keeps stumbling and bumbling about, making one bad decision after another. Sure, he’ll argue that he listens to General Dempsey on these matters, but in my opinion, Dempsey doesn’t even agree with the policy that he’s been pimping. He’s serving the president’s political needs right now, and I’m not even sure he’s doing a good job at that. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dempsey step down sometime in 2015. We’ll have to wait and see.

At any rate, does Samantha Power make you feel any more comfortable about the Obama ISIS strategy? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d sooner take advice from a roast beef sandwich than this woman.