Read Peter Beinert on How Obama Views Terrorism

++Peter Beinert in this week's Atlantic analyzes President Obama's view of terrorism versus The Republicans. Obama views radical jihadism as a small strand of Islam while the GOP thinks it is a descendent from all totalitarian ideologies from the past century. As Marco Rubio said,it's a war between them and us . One of us must survive. This is the Clash of Civilizations paradigm that infects neoconservative thought. Beinert says that President Obama is a Fukuyamaite, believing that the structural advantages of a democratic system will overcome the jihadists and that Moslems in America will not go in that direction. While Trump thinks they are already in that direction. 

++Nancy LeTourneau in Washington Monthly this afternoon talked about how President Obama sees leadership different from the media. He was asked at the Hague by Jon Karl whether or not Vladimir Putin took the lead in world leadership by invading Crimea. President Obama answered that when he came into office the Ukraine had been run by a Putin stooge and now it's not so Putin reacted to this. He said that if your economy is on the brink and you have to invade part of a country which was your ally, you have problems. He reiterated this to Steve Hoft when he argued that Putin's position in Syria was from weakness. 

++It will be interesting to see how these two views of leadership play out over the next few months. 

Today I have received some much incoming from conservatives who basically agree that President Obama is a "pussy." But their answers to the situation are incoherent. They tell jokes about President Obama's weakness while Nancy LeTourneau makes a point about how the Republicans project weakness.