百日離愁 奧巴馬的大失誤盤點

President Obama and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi at a G8/G5 summit in Italy, July 2009

奧巴馬與卡扎菲在意大利八國集團峯會上擦肩而過,攝於2009年7月

In July 2012, with his reelection campaign in full swing, Obama was asked in a CBS interview to assess his first-term failures.

2012年7月,奧巴馬連任成功,在哥倫比亞廣播公司的採訪中被問及如何評價其首任任期中的失策。

“The mistake of my first term, couple of years, was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right,” Obama said. He continued, “And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

“我首任任期這幾年中的錯誤，就是我老想着我的工作就是去確保政策的正確”奧巴馬說道“這確實很重要，但是呢，政府的本職也是要告訴美國人民一個願景並給予他們團結，希望和樂觀的心態，特別是在困難時期。”

Obama reflected that the doubts about him during the 2008 campaign — when “everybody said, ‘Well he can give a good speech but can he actually, you know, manage the job?’” — had by 2012 morphed into: “‘Well, he’s been juggling and managing a lot of stuff, but, you know, where’s the story that tells us where he’s going?’” And, the president admitted, “I think that was a legitimate criticism.”

奧巴馬反思了他在08年競選時人們對他的疑問-每個人都說“他現在演講裏說的好聽，但實際上，你知道的，他能勝任總統嗎？”-到了2012年變成“嗯，他煞費心機的對付很多事情，但是，你知道，他給我們畫的大餅在哪裏？”然後，總統先生也承認“我覺得這是個合理的批評”。

Obama concluded, “Getting out of this town, spending more time with the American people, listening to them, and also then being in a conversation with them about where do we go together as a country, I need to do a better job of that in my second term.”

那時奧巴馬總結道“我要離開這個小鎮，花更多的時間和美國人民在一起，傾聽他們的聲音，並且也和他們討論作爲一個國家該如何團結向前，在我的第二任期我需要做得更好。”

By December 2013, the disastrous Obamacare rollout trumped the communications lapses. Obama called the busted website his biggest mistake and took responsibility.

到了2013年2月，糟糕的奧巴馬醫改因爲溝通失誤而流產，奧巴馬讓某政府網站替他的大錯誤背黑鍋。

Over the past two years, Obama’s answer has shifted again, from Obamacare’s rollout to the failure to rebuild Libyan institutions after helping the rebels who toppled and killed dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Upon learning of Gadhafi’s killing in October 2011, Hillary Clinton responded: “We came. We saw. He died.”

在過去的兩年中，奧巴馬的答案再次改變，從他的醫改失敗到在幫助叛軍殺死獨裁者卡扎菲後留下的重建利比亞的爛攤子。2011年10月，在聽到卡扎菲死訊後，希拉里迴應道“我來，我見，他死了”

In an August 2014 interview with the New York Times, Obama defended the decision to be part of “the coalition that overthrew Gadhafi” as “the right thing to do,” and argued, “Had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria.”

在2014年8月接受《紐約時報》採訪時，奧巴馬爲他的決議辯護稱“聯軍推翻卡扎菲是正確的，如果我們沒有幹掉卡扎菲，利比亞就會變成敘利亞這樣”

At the same time, he told the Times, “I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force” to rebuild post-Gadhafi Libyan society. “That’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’” Obama said.

與此同時，他又同泰晤士報講“我認爲我和我們的歐洲夥伴低估了後卡扎菲時代利比亞重建的重要性。這是一個教訓，我現在常常捫心自問，我們應該軍事幹預嗎？干預之後我們有沒有一個對策？”

But in an April 2016 piece in the Atlantic, based on multiple interviews, Obama basically shifted the blame for his “biggest mistake” onto allies Britain and France.

但到了2016年4月的大西洋月刊中，基於數次採訪，奧巴馬基本把他的這個最大錯誤的責任推給了他的盟友英國和法國。

“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong,” Obama said, “there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” he said. He pointed out that Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, lost his job the following year. And he said that British Prime Minister David Cameron quickly became “distracted by a range of other things.”

“當我回問自己那裏出了錯”奧巴馬說“這仍有批評的餘地，那就是因爲我對離利比亞更近的歐洲人在戰後重建上更有信心”。他指出，（沒想到）法國總統薩科齊在那之後下臺了，而英國首相卡梅倫也很快因爲其他的事而困擾分心（所以沒能搞好重建）。