Hope and Fail

Like it or not?

President Obama has finished up yet another lackluster summit of world leaders resulting in nonbinding agreements (at least he stayed home this time), this one dealing with “nuclear security.”

During a press conference at the end of the events, Ed Chen of Bloomburg asked Obama whether he possessed the political capital to jump start U.S. efforts in the Middle East. As part of his answer, the president said this:

It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

What? “Whether we like it or not” the U.S. remains a “dominant military superpower?”

Except in the extremities of the left wing, who in the United States would not like it that our nation is a (if not THE) dominant military superpower? Would the president had even been able to call the world’s leaders to Washington to discuss nuclear security if the United States wasn’t a dominant superpower?

On the world stage, the country with the most leverage and influence is the strongest. So why couch the fact that the we are powerful with “whether we like it or not?”

As Ed Morrissey noted:

The phrase “whether we like it or not” usually connotes a negative to which an audience has to resign themselves. To give one example, no one ever hears, “Whether you like it or not, you’re going to get a banana split with your choice of toppings,” or “Like it or not, I’m going to get naked now.”