"Not involved"

A New York Times article today starts with, "President Obama was not involved in the decision to indict five members of the People's Liberation Army, an administration official said."  The article then implies strongly, as if it would be odd to think otherwise, that the Justice Department has been building its case for several years and it is their territory.  A Justice Department official, was quoted relying on a condition of anonymity, "Our message wasn't getting through".

First question is when is the Justice Department in the position to independently make important foreign policy decisions.  Second question is when does an important issue rise above the level of trivial so that Obama can focus on it.  Third question is was the administration official lying?

The charges of corporate espionage against Chinese operatives may be right, almost no doubt it is, but there must have been a better way to handle this.  After all of Edward Snowden's revelations, the administration's charges were low lying fruit for every propagandist around the world, and even some truth tellers.  On top of that, how can the U.S. set the precedent for indicting other country's individual citizens for crimes, and not deal with the bigger picture of government policy as well.  Sanctions, tariffs, patent resolutions and charges, well I guess that was not the chosen direction so, they maybe said, we'll just pick out five individuals for a showcase media trial, in absentia, in the U.S.  This was a naive idea to start with.  If the idea did actually come from Obama it shows that once again he puts his emotion and political positioning ahead of a real thought process, and if it did not come from Obama that's worse.  Our fears are confirmed, and he has become a disengaged self absorbed President.

There's more to come on this, one could expect.