Here’s how Obama represented America at his 2016 nuclear security summit

By J.E. Dyer
Here’s how Obama represented America at his 2016 nuclear security summit

It just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, knowing that this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger, and is in charge of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the radical mullahs of Iran.

The U.S. media are showing nothing but demure, serious passages from Obama’s big nuclear shindig (from which, I noted before, the Russians are absenting themselves).  But Daily Mail has an image collection that gives us, shall we say, a different side of the POTUS-in-Chief as he played host to world leaders on nuclear security business.

Oh, let’s get this one out of the way first.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Yes, he really did.  As Daily Mail highlights, other world leaders were unimpressed.

David Cameron was “left out” of the budding bromance between Obama and Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau did some mugging of his own for the group photo.

Security curmudgeons, of course, are distressed by things like the reports this week that Obama will go above and beyond the nuclear “deal” with Iran and give the Iranians access to the U.S. financial system.  Well, and reports that Obama promised at the summit to provide, for the first time ever, a public inventory of America’s nuclear stockpile.  (With details about the measures we take to secure nuclear weapons and materials, in case you were worried that Obama won’t be quite public-spirited enough.  Given the towering pointlessness of this gesture, since anyone with Internet access already has a perfectly adequate idea of what our nuclear inventory consists of, one can’t help suspecting that the purpose is actually to set an “example” that pressures Israel to make public declarations.  Obama’s little move certainly won’t have any effect on the other nuclear-armed states.  But who knows, maybe it was Trudeau’s lounge act that did the trick on the security-methods disclosure.)

So, anyway, there are things like that to harsh Obama’s mellow.  The curmudgeons seem not to have noticed how Obama has forestalled the grave threat to international nuclear security from our ally Japan, which until just today had neglected to arrange for the U.S. to take custody of highly enriched uranium from a Japanese research reactor.  Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about that anymore.  (Although…given Obama’s very low priority for keeping unauthorized trucks from driving across our southern border wherever they feel like it, the HEU may actually be safer from theft and misuse in Japan.)

But aside from a meaningless bureaucratic checklist, the summit seems to have been mainly about the giggling photo op at the end.

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

Comments

For your convenience, you may leave commments below using Disqus. If Disqus is not appearing for you, please disable AdBlock to leave a comment.