most deliberately boring, despicably dishonest, triangulating Bush-lite speech ever

Obviously gamed to "win over" the Republicans in some way, but for what? Karl Rove and McCain are instantly supportive. And why not? They have nothing to lose by Obama's inevitable failure, and now Obama has rhetorically and symbolically legitimized the Bush paradigm, and the larger Project (For a New American Century). Yet as farce this time, his delivery and timing could not have been worse, politically. The only threat the Taliban poses is in making us look like a failed empire after 8 years of rendering them stronger–an effect this surge will almost certainly redouble.) Do they really think Pakistan will help capture Bin Laden? Depending on Pakistan seems an enormous gamble, assuming Obama's decided to reverse the neocon policy of letting Bin Laden get away (although admittedly killing one all-but-forgotten bogeyman might be spun as some kind of closure to allow America to finally start the mourning process). Meanwhile and more importantly, if anything is clear it is that the context of larger geopolitics remains unspeakable, not least of all because they cannot be "justified."

The applause from kid soldiers (many of them about to die for yet more master narrative propaganda-mantras, half-truths and outright lies) was glaringly tepid (though it helped wake up the third of them obviously dozing). Whatever political capital Obama gains by triangulating he loses instantly by having legitimized the idiocy of 30+ years of disastrous foreign policy and shifting the long-term frame of debate yet again further to the right. And after nearly a year of legitimizing 30 years of class warfare, with Goldman Sachs now running the country with still rising unemployment and no serious efforts to address climate change or health care in any manner even mildly uncomfortable to the habituated exponential greed of our largest monopolized corporations, we already know it won't be worth. Not to mention the glaring absence of anything resembling moderately serious or binding exit strategy: no end in sight.
.
But Digby is right. Progressives really have no right to feel betrayed.

Still what an awful speech and complete load of bullshit.

Update: Wednesday's Democracy Now show cuts through nearly all of it: