Obama and Pakistan: Oh, the Spin I'm In

I'm really surprised, not at the spin put on Obama's recent counter-terrorism speech, but the rapidity with which the spin has become the content. From Daniel Larison:

Obama waves a sabre in Pakistan’s direction, which is hardly the first time that he has sought to portray himself as more belligerent than the warmongers, further proving that he isn’t fit to sit in on National Security Council meetings, much less be the President. I think Obama is pushing exactly the wrong line here, threatening to effectively destabilise the existing regime without having any idea of what would come next. This is a combination of soundbite foreign policy and a “pour oil on fire to see what happens” approach to international relations.

This is really astonishing. Andrew Sullivan, not the deepest pool in the creek, reports it without comment. (I find it odd that Sullivan, who claims foreign policy as one of his main territories, can be so off-base about it so often. Must be a problem with depth perception.)

Fortunately, Larison gets called on it by his commenters, who note quite rightly that Obama called for no such thing. Larison's responses, however, seem to indicate that he has trouble with what we used to call reading comprehension. Either that, or neocon Newspeak has infiltrated the ranks of "real" conservatives, such as Sullivan and Larison claim to be. Note that Larison simply ignores the points made about the actual content of Obama's speech in favor of -- well, things like this:

It would be an interesting concept, if Obama demonstrated that he had any idea how to do any of those things. His remarks on Pakistan show me that he does not deviate meaningfully from the worst aspects of the Bush years. On the contrary, he may be more dangerous to the extent that he thinks Bush has been going too *easy* on Musharraf. That is crazy and frankly irresponsible. This has nothing to do with anything other than Obama’s incompetence.

It's beyond reading a position into Obama's remarks. It's pure fantasy. Does someone have an axe to grind? I don't know. I'm not familiar with Larison's viewoints or history. He has another post on the issue, in which he takes off from a statement by Pat Buchanan, which itself starts off "But if . . . ." as justification for his reading of Obama's remarks. This is pretty much baldfaced manipulation, with just about every logical error that exists thrown in, all under the general category of "straw man." (I did read some of his other posts. Yeah, well.)

The irony is that Sullivan takes on the role of the Washington press corps in this one: stenographer. But then, he is one of the Beltway insiders.

An aside, sort of: TPM Election central reports that AP reports that Obama's remarks have caused Pakistanis to burn American flags. Now, I expect Musharraf and/or his radical opponents to milk the possible misinterpretations of Obama's remarks as much as possible. Maybe even as much as conservative commentators here.