truth on hold Posted August 12, 2014 Author Share Posted August 12, 2014 We started it in Ukraine? Did we start the Napoleonic wars too? Who did that? Nixon? http://youtu.be/8YSFNOaJupE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 http://www.washingto...5c1a_story.html Mugged by reality in the Middle East by Michael Gerson So ends a foreign policy experiment that began with two choices in 2011. In that hinge year, President Obama decided to stay out of the Syrian conflict and to passively accept the withdrawal of all U.S. ground forces from Iraq (which he later claimed as a personal achievement during his reelection campaign). I’m not sure the motivation behind these acts can be termed a strategy. They seemed rooted in a perception of the public’s war-weariness (which Obama fed through his own rhetoric), a firm determination to be the anti-Bush and a vague belief that a U.S. presence in the Middle East creates more problems than it solves. Not coincidentally, according to political scientist Colin Dueck, “elite, trans-Atlantic liberal opinion” viewed Obama’s approach as “the height of sophistication, regardless of its practical failures.” Those failures are now massive, undeniable and unfolding: Atrocities in Syria (including the death of more than 10,000 children); an endless Syrian civil war in which the threat of the Islamic State gathered strength; the victory of the Islamic State against a hollowed-out Iraqi military; the massacre of religious minorities; the establishment of a terrorist safe haven the size of New England, controlled by well-armed, expansionist, messianic militants; the attraction of more than 10,000 global jihadists to the conflict, including thousands with Western passports; and now the forced return of U.S. attention to the region under dramatically less-favorable circumstances. This is what the complete collapse of a foreign policy doctrine looks like. More at the link: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted August 16, 2014 Share Posted August 16, 2014 To fix foreign policy mistakes, President Obama must first admit themWashington Post, by Jackson Diehl Original Article “What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.” These words, marrying petulance and implausibility, were spoken by President Obama when he was asked, shortly after the beginning of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, whether he regretted withdrawing all U.S. troops from the country during his first term.“That entire analysis is bogus and is wrong,” was his startling answer. That Obama is somehow not responsible for the Iraq pullout would be news to anyone who remembers his announcement of it, when he bragged of fulfilling his “promise” to end “America’s war in Iraq”; or his subsequent election campaign, in which he tirelessly proclaimed that “the tide of war is receding.” The sudden disclaimer certainly raised eyebrows among the numerous senior officials who have said, both on and off the record, that Obama resisted leaving behind a stay-on force, slashed its size far below that proposed by military commanders and expressed relief when a legal snag provided him a pretext to pull the plug on Iraq altogether. What’s most disturbing about Obama’s outburst, however, is what it says about his willingness, with 2 1 / 2 years left in his term, to recognize his foreign policy mistakes and endeavor to correct them. Even as he has been forced to reverse his Iraq decision, the president appears stubbornly determined to reject the conclusion that has become conventional wisdom outside the White House: that his retreat in Iraq and passivity in Syria did much to create the ugly monster the United States now faces in the Islamic State, an organization that is more powerful, more vicious and more ambitious than al-Qaeda prior to Sept, 11, 2001. More at the link: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truth on hold Posted August 16, 2014 Author Share Posted August 16, 2014 (edited) So what is it now around 200,000 Syrian civilian casualties? And our policy is to kkeep supporting rebels so there'll be ongoing stalemate resulting in a mounting toll. Yet we intervene in a neighboring country this time against the same rebels to save a a yazidi population that's a fraction of the Syrian death toll? ISIS militants massacre 80 Yazidis in north Iraq RBIL, IRAQ—Airstrikes pounded the area around Iraq's largest dam on Saturday in an effort to drive out militants who captured it earlier this month, as reports emerged of the massacre of some 80 members of the Yazidi religious minority by Islamic extremists. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/08/16/isis_militants_massacre_80_yazidis_in_north_iraq.html?app=noRedirect Edited August 16, 2014 by Joe_the_6_pack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 From Jay Nordlinger: In a Wall Street Journal editorial about Russia, there was a remarkable sentence. An accurate one, but a jarring one --- and a telling one. Here it is: "The State Department admitted last month that Russia has violated the 1987 INF Treaty" You might expect “The Kremlin admitted”; instead you get “The State Department admitted.” Telling, right? . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truth on hold Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 (edited) Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East Presentation to a Middle East Policy Council Capitol Hill Conference Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Washington, DC, 21 July 2014 "This brings me to a key point of policy difficulty. We’ve repeatedly told people in the Middle East they must be either with us or against us. But they remain annoyingly unreliable about this. Iran’s ayatollahs are against us in Syria, Lebanon, and Bahrain but with us in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Assad regime and Hezbollah oppose us in Syria and Lebanon but are on our side in Iraq. The Salafi jihadis are with us in Syria but against us in Iraq and elsewhere. Israel’s government is with us on Iran but against us in blocking self-determination for Palestinians while favoring it for Kurds. Saudi Arabia is with us on Iran and Syria but against us in Iraq. It was for us and then against us before it was for us in Egypt. It’s against the Jihadistan in the Fertile Crescent but nobody can figure out where it stands on Salafi jihadis in other places. How can you have a coherent strategy to manage the Middle East when people there are so damnably inconsistent? The answer is that outsiders can’t manage the Middle East and shouldn’t try. It’s time to let the countries in the region accept responsibility for what they do rather than acting in such a way as to free them to behave irresponsibly." http://chasfreeman.n...he-middle-east/ Edited August 19, 2014 by Joe_the_6_pack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keukasmallies Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East Presentation to a Middle East Policy Council Capitol Hill Conference Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Washington, DC, 21 July 2014 "This brings me to a key point of policy difficulty. We’ve repeatedly told people in the Middle East they must be either with us or against us. But they remain annoyingly unreliable about this. Iran’s ayatollahs are against us in Syria, Lebanon, and Bahrain but with us in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Assad regime and Hezbollah oppose us in Syria and Lebanon but are on our side in Iraq. The Salafi jihadis are with us in Syria but against us in Iraq and elsewhere. Israel’s government is with us on Iran but against us in blocking self-determination for Palestinians while favoring it for Kurds. Saudi Arabia is with us on Iran and Syria but against us in Iraq. It was for us and then against us before it was for us in Egypt. It’s against the Jihadistan in the Fertile Crescent but nobody can figure out where it stands on Salafi jihadis in other places. How can you have a coherent strategy to manage the Middle East when people there are so damnably inconsistent? The answer is that outsiders can’t manage the Middle East and shouldn’t try. It’s time to let the countries in the region accept responsibility for what they do rather than acting in such a way as to free them to behave irresponsibly." http://chasfreeman.n...he-middle-east/ But, but...if we aren't meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere, what ever shall we do? Will we turn attention to some of the domestic problems we appear to decry, then ignore (read immigration policy), will we be forced to address homelessness, true health care delivery, infrastructure repairs? Nah, let's just keep on pouring money and lives into situations in countries that we haven't the faintest hope of ever understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob in Mich Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Wasn't part of the plan to bankrupt the US? It seems that all our enemies have to do is to keep creating crises in multiple locations around the globe. As long as we continue to believe we should take the lead in solving all of them, we will be broke soon enough. It costs X dollars to create a problem and 10,000X to clean it up and defend against it in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob's House Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 And last name. Don't forget how important that is. Also, don't be surprised if Monica Lewinsky eventually ends up running the country. Her "successes" are about as impressive as Hillary Clinton's. Well, we know she gives good head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truth on hold Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 (edited) But, but...if we aren't meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere, what ever shall we do? Will we turn attention to some of the domestic problems we appear to decry, then ignore (read immigration policy), will we be forced to address homelessness, true health care delivery, infrastructure repairs? Nah, let's just keep on pouring money and lives into situations in countries that we haven't the faintest hope of ever understanding. Return of the Anti-War Right Sen. Rand Paul is among those insisting on a less aggressive approach to foreign policy. In the February 1987 issue of reason, Bill Kauffman wrote about the history of the "anti-war capitalists," explaining that while this cohort of activists did not look like the kind of protesters that were most prominent in the "peace movement" of the 1960s, '70s, and even '80s, they could trace their intellectual roots through a long tradition of libertarian anti-war thinking. Kauffman explained that before the era of the left-wing peace movement, opponents of war were "midwestern industrialists and retired military officers, publishing giants and Texas oilmen, or minerals executives and Great Plains farmers." That such people once dominated the anti-war movement, Kauffman noted, was "an inconvenient fact that has been consigned to the memory hole by left and right alike." Non-intervention, wrote Kauffman, had become part and parcel of a "grand mosaic of socialism, ecologism, holistic feminism, etc.," ideas that might turn off the majority of ordinary Americans who had, in Kauffman's view, retained a distinctly Jeffersonian view of foreign policy and non-intervention. Today, the idea of non-interventionism has re-entered the mainstream, in part because of the growing influence of libertarianism in American politics. http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/17/return-of-the-anti-war-right Edited August 19, 2014 by Joe_the_6_pack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 http://www.commentar...e/the-meltdown/ The Meltdown by Bret Stephens In July, after Germany trounced Brazil 7–1 in the semifinal match of the World Cup—including a first-half stretch in which the Brazilian soccer squad gave up an astonishing five goals in 19 minutes—a sports commentator wrote: “This was not a team losing. It was a dream dying.” These words could equally describe what has become of Barack Obama’s foreign policy since his second inauguration. The president, according to the infatuated view of his political aides and media flatterers, was supposed to be playing o jogo bonito, the beautiful game—ending wars, pressing resets, pursuing pivots, and restoring America’s good name abroad. Instead, he crumbled. Very lengthy article by a Pulitzer Prize winning author, who makes the case that our disastrous foreign policy is not all accidental. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 http://www.commentar...e/the-meltdown/ As I write, the foreign policy of the United States is in a state of unprecedented disarray. In . Really? Oh, it was better in 2005? In 1968 it was so wonderful! B-Man will just pass along any old puff piece he can dig up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Really? Oh, it was better in 2005? I'm sick of everything being about Bush! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Did you miss the 1968 part? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Did you miss the 1968 part? Did you miss the part where the fool who's "sick of everything being about Bush" brought up Bush AGAIN? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
/dev/null Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 http://reason.com/ar...-anti-war-right Jt6p citing Reason Magazine . There may be hope for you yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
/dev/null Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 The enemy of my enemy... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/west-poised-to-join-forces-with-president-assad-in-face-of-islamic-state-9686666.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 The enemy of my enemy... http://www.independe...te-9686666.html Next thing you know, we'll be giving Assad chemical weapons to use against ISIL. The entirety of this administration's policies - foreign, domestic, economic, social, what have you - is nothing more than a series of unrelated knee-jerk reactions not the least bit thought out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaska Darin Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 Wasn't part of the plan to bankrupt the US? It seems that all our enemies have to do is to keep creating crises in multiple locations around the globe. As long as we continue to believe we should take the lead in solving all of them, we will be broke soon enough. It costs X dollars to create a problem and 10,000X to clean it up and defend against it in the future. Uh, we're already broke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truth on hold Posted August 24, 2014 Author Share Posted August 24, 2014 US Gives Intelligence To Assad For Targetting Isis Commanders Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the newspaper that a de facto truce with Assad was probable, though it was unlikely that Western government would offer public support to the Assad regime. Last year, the US came close to launching air strikes against Assad's regime, after it was accused of using chemical weapons against civilians in rebel-held areas of Damascus. He said he doubted that "the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives who had pursued regime change in Syria were capable of reversing course. To do so would require them to admit that they bore considerable responsibility for legitimising pointless violence that has resulted in the deaths of 190,000 Syrians." http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-gives-intelligence-assad-targetting-isis-commanders-1462375 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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