[This comment has been copied from Lurker's news link to Middle-East Woes.]

Here is an interesting BBC op-ed response to Obama's commencement speech. I believe the crux of it resides in this bit:

…If only the elitist president had it within himself to level with the American people, I suspect he would be pleasantly surprised. For a curious political feature of the opening years of the new multi-polar era has been the canyon in perception that has opened between average Americans (well aware what the calamities of Iraq and Lehman Brothers have done to the country) and a dimwitted foreign policy establishment, still incredibly believing the US can pretty much do as it chooses to in the world.

As a startling Pew poll from autumn of 2013 made clear, a majority of 52 to 38 percent of Americans agreed that the US should mind its own business internationally - it's the first time since 1964 that more than half of the country has held such a non-interventionist view. It is hard to run an expansive foreign policy on a budget, with a majority of the country opposed to this prospect, having been so badly burned over both Iraq and the Great Recession. Obama knows this, and to his credit has acted on this knowledge, crafting a cautious, responsible, foreign policy basing the overarching goal of his foreign policy on the tenet, "Don't do stupid stuff." Hardly heroic, but entirely in tune with times in which we live.

I believe John Hulsman (the author) has more faith in the American people than do I.