"No 'Obama Doctrine' in Speech"

...headline from local paper. I guess I wasn't the only one to notice! Maybe we could call it "Obama's Old Mother Hubbard* speech"? Except, what would differentiate it from all the others?

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama sent a signal to the country and the world Monday night about his decision to attack Libya: There is no "Obama doctrine" here.

Obama used his evening speech to assure skeptical Americans that he was forced to act by a madman in unique circumstances, that the U.S. role and risk would be limited, and that there is no unifying set of principles behind the Libya campaign that would guide the U.S. in other countries with similar problems.

Try as he might, Obama could not convince most people that a violation of American "values" constituted a threat to American security interests.

Ultimately, Obama said, his actions in Libya are a case study in pragmatism, not a doctrine. It depends on circumstances, he said.

"It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs," he said. "But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right."

Which is, of course, a straw man, for the opposite of not taking action in a particular case is not "never taking action".

The President set forth no governing principle to guide us, merely a string of platitudes stitched together with rhetorical sleight of hand.

*Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor dog a bone;
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog** had none.

**Probably a yellow dog.