Obama says the world has always been ‘messy.’ (It is just more apparent because of social media)

NEWPORT [30.08.14]: If the world seems troubled by all manner of calamities these days, President Obama does not want Americans to worry too much. 
After all, he said Friday, "The world has always been messy"; it is just more apparent because of social media. And, he added, today's geopolitical threats are far less perilous than those of the Cold War.

Governing at a time of war, terrorism and disease, and frustrated on multiple fronts at once, Obama finds himself trying to buck up supporters heading into a crucial midterm election season.
The succession of international crises has taken a toll on the public mood, not to mention his own poll ratings, and he seems intent on reassuring Americans that the challenges are manageable.

As he spent Friday sweeping through New York and Rhode Island to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for vulnerable Democrats, Obama addressed that public apprehension directly, acknowledging that many Americans "are feeling anxious" about their country and its place in the world. The showdown with Russia over Ukraine, the emergence of a radical new Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of China have stirred unease about the future of the United States, he said.

"If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart," he said at a Democratic fund-raiser in New York. Expanding on a theme he has touched on at recent fund-raisers, Obama agreed that "we are living through some extraordinarily challenging times" and "I can see why a lot of folks are troubled."

But Obama said Americans should remain calm and confident. "We will get through these challenging times just like we have in the past," he said. "This is not something that is comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War."

Obama attributed much of the turmoil to a rupture of the old order in the Middle East that is playing out across that region in often bloody and unpredictable ways, all of which "makes things pretty frightening." But he said that the Middle East has "been challenging for quite a while" and that in some ways the main difference was that Americans were paying more attention because of the advent of new technologies bringing home faraway events in visceral ways.

"The truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy," he said. "In part, we're just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through."

But on a day that Britain raised its terrorist threat level because of concerns about extremists in Syria and Iraq, Obama said his "main message" was that "America's military superiority has never been greater" and that its defenses are stronger than they were before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

A day after saying "we don't have a strategy yet" to take on Islamic radicals in Syria, Obama made little effort to explain his approach to tackling myriad problems in the world, nor did he respond to critics who blame him in part for making those problems worse through what they say are ineffective policies. But he said that Russia and China were not countries to envy or fear and that America was still best-positioned for the future. 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-says-the-world-has-always-been-messy/articleshow/41268392.cms
30/8/14
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Related:

• Moscow Alarmed by US Possible US Reconnaissance Flights Above Syria. (it can be authorized only by the UN Security Council)

• UK raises terror threat level over Syria, Iraq to severe, meaning an attack is “highly likely.”