There was a time, not too long ago, when the president would have taken deafening criticism for his Middle East policy. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the Israelis and the Saudis howling in protest, but no one in Washington or the media seems to give a shit. The few who are saying anything are certainly not getting much attention. They tried to rope President Obama into Syria and he wriggled out of their chains. They tried to keep him from talking to Iran, but he’s going ahead with it despite their complaints.
I think he has this freedom of action in part because he’s a second-term president who doesn’t have to worry about getting reelected, but it’s also because the Republicans no longer speak with one voice on foreign policy. And they are too distracted by bullshit to even get their act together to have a coherent position on issues in the Middle East. There is also a boy-who-cried-wolf component to the Republicans’ impotence. They spent so much time talking about Benghazi that they missed the part where Libya became an ungovernable shithole. And who would lend their criticisms any credibility at this point, after they have been wrong about everything in the region for more than a decade?
It’s kind of stunning to see the neo-conservatives so isolated and impotent. But they certainly earned their fate.
I agree to a point. But the elephant in the room is the way his hands are completely tied on Israel. As a liberal Jew, I’d love to see Obama free to put the wood to Bibi and the other bastards who feel entitled to walk over the Palestinians. Unfortunately, Bibi owns Congress and those are finger cuffs from which Obama cannot escape.
Bibi made an appointment on Sunday morning TV before I could switch to the pregame. I’m guessing until they put him in a seat between Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson his bully pulpit will continue to wane.
Oh, much, much, much longer than a decade, BooMan!
Just within the last 2 decades:
Remember how Clinton sending troops into Kosovo would cost the country a fortune, and result in thousands of dead American military personnel?
And the cost was negligible, butand one guy actually got hurt – by spraining his ankle?
And remember how bin Laden and Al Qaeda were “wag the dog,” and of no concern after the SCOTUS gave W the election, and they ignored all of the 9/11 warning signs as they pursued their “ABC Policy” – Anything But Clinton?
And then, WHOOOPSIE!
And then how we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq, and it would only cost us $100 Million to a $1 Billion to invade and take over that country, with negligible casualties on either ours or the Iraqi sides?
Why, even if I cost more than that, the war would pay for itself, with Iraqi oil!
And the result was trillions of dollars in debt, and still climbing.
And millions of dead, wounded, and displaced Iraqi’s.
And thousands of our military members dead, and tens and tens of thousands of Americans wounded physically and mentally.
And then, while completely and totally ignoring North Korea, how the NeoCLOWNS shrieked that Iran was the new Nazi Germany, and/or Imperial Japan?
And how we need to do a preemptive strike!
And now, with Obama, the Iranians want to see what they can do to improve relations between our two countries.
I don’t want to hear one more single goddamn f*cking thing from Conservatives about foreign policy.
Not after THAT track record!!!!!
And let’s not even mention their 45 years of domestic economic policy, which has practically turned this country into a Banana Republic!!!
Thanks, you sociopathic banana’s Republicans!
Fer nothin’!!!!!!
STFU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yet Hillary Clinton is still brandishing her neocon credentials everywhere she goes. She is still dissing the President for his foreign policy. It’s almost as if she’s worried there won’t be any wars to fight if she ever gets into office. No wars to prove she’s got balls instead of ovaries. What will she do?
Admittedly, I haven’t been paying too much attention, but I suspect she would like a little freedom to move, whether with Isreal, the Saudis, or not. If the last couple years of Obama’s presidency allow that, she may say what she needs to for some cash now, but in office things will probably be a bit different.
Admittedly, I haven’t been paying too much attention, but I suspect she would like a little freedom to move, whether with Isreal, the Saudis, or not. If the last couple years of Obama’s presidency allow that, she may say what she needs to for some cash now, but in office things will probably be a bit different.
Hillary is Zbigniew’s spawn.
That’s it. The Peace Train is on the move. And Hillary likes to stick with her loyal crew. Will she recognize the new dynamic (win-win) or remain in the win-lose mindset?
I’d like to see some signs that she ‘gets it’ about the changing scene in the ME, but so far she is pretty much still boilerplating the donkey, so to speak.
Mentioned this in a comment to your previous post, but it is kind of funny to watch The New York Times and Michael Gordon try to get the band back together:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/world/middleeast/kerry-reassures-israel-on-iran-but-divisions-rema
in.html?pagewanted=all
.
○ US Will Be Ousted by Saudi King Abdullah in Middle-East Feb. 27, 2013
Part taken from my new dairy.
He’s right, but only in part. Our foreign policy is part and parcel of something much much larger — our cultural footprint. American culture is invasive and gets in through every crack and fissure. Every time a traditional food stand closes up because of the Pizza Hut that opened a block away, it’s felt. It’s felt when someone is enticed by our films to live differently than their parents and it’s felt as attitudes toward education and sex and food and dress shift.
We, in our arrogance, sometimes think we’re bringing enlightenment to the world but not everyone sees it that way. Or, rather, we (like them) only know what we know. We see the benefits of our way of life but we don’t see what they’re losing. And they see what they’re losing without understanding what there is to gain.
Alas, there’s a subset of people in various cultures (but particularly in the Muslim world) who want to say, “No thanks; we don’t want your culture; we don’t want to be like you.” But they can’t because our culture just keeps coming and coming, getting in (as I said before) through every crack and fissure — and this is why the reaction can be so violent. It’s a “FUCK NO!!!” and it’s a reaction born of desperation. None of which justifies violence. Violence is prohibited in the very Qu’ran they think they’re defending. But it is, unfortunately, all too human.
Id also dump them in a heartbeat but Michael Schuer has in general lost his marbles, if he had them ever at all.
I’m surprised by your comment which is an ad hominum attack on the person Scheuer. He was invited to the US Senate hearing on Foreign Relations. Reminds me of a young soldier who fought in Vietnam and gave a piece of his mind during the Nixon administration. At least during the late sixties, young Americans were willing and able to protest ill founded policy across the nation. Those are Democratic principles they were fighting for.
Scheuer has been at the CIA front in executing US policy laid out by the President and US Congress. He his clearly troubled but not in anyway you try to paint him. His criticism is clearly at the charade the Senators try to uphold that Israel is of special interest and security to the US. General Dempsey has come forward to criticise Israel in the same way. Israel is in many ways an undemocratic and rogue state. The US has copied many of it’s military tactics of urban warfare that are clearly against human rights and International Law. Illegal occupation of Palestinian land, military action on foreign sovereign soil, treatment of imprisoned Palestinians and torture. We have occupied Iraq and murdered thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, used prohibited munitions, used revenge attacks in Fallujah, treatment/torture in Abu Ghraib (and elesewhere), Guantanamo Bay, drone attacks to murder suspects and as collateral damage civilian deaths.
Michael Scheuer, adjunct professor of security studies, on the revolutions happening in North Africa and the Middle East.
Why the Mideast Revolts Will Help Al-Qaeda March 4, 2011, The Washington Post
Al-Qaeda is a Bigger Threat Today than 10 Years Ago, says Terrorism Expert October 7, 2010, Deutsche Welle.
I wouldn’t call it an ad hominem per se. I agree with his argument and am not trying to argue against it by discrediting him. I just wouldn’t personally cite him to make my case.
○ Lobby? What Lobby? – by Michael Scheuer
○ Former UK foreign secretary: AIPAC is the main barrier to peace
I have more respect for Scheuer than Straw. Too often, when in power, politicians don’t speak out or hide behind the “establishment” to come forward with criticism afterwards. Very cowardly.
It does seem as though the extreme conservatives, including those in Israel, are finally losing sway in Washington – in that their viewpoints are no longer considered mainstream. I don’t count on that persisting, but it’s a positive development.
It should be noted that we (the American people) certainly helped him escape the Syria trap. Our massive disapproval of engaging any further in that country provided both time and additional cover.
Let’s not celebrate too quickly. And start looking at the larger picture.
If President Obama was wriggling out of going to war with Syria, that means that the current discord between Secretary of State Kerry and “senior State department officials” is a rearguard action of the neo-cons. And the AFP article about Obama knowing in 2010 that NSA was tapping Angela Merkel’s communications (sources to an “US intelligence” source is likewise a rearguard action that might be related to NSA reform but might also be related to preserving an overbloated national security apparatus.
Ask yourself what happens if the US does succeed in not only dealing with the Iran nuclear issue but normalizing relations with Iran. What happens when Russia and Syria in fact deliver a Syria without chemical weapons? What reason is there for a Fifth Fleet anchored in Bahrain anymore? And if that fleet continues, where does it get re-deployed? (My guess, Diego Garcia or Western Australia).
So China is now the largest consumer of oil. Guess why Saudi Arabia is talking to them? Without oil, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia must have substantial economic and political reforms. So they can substitute their western contractors with Chinese contractors. And Egypt and Saudi Arabia seem to be tilting to Russia, which represents a parallel interest in authoritarian, religious-related polity.
Well-handled, the transition away from the sole-US-superpower international system could dramatically move global productive activity away from militaries and war and toward civilian production and addressing of many environmental and social problems. This, however, will be a wrenching cultural change for a nation that has effectively continually been at war for 72 years.
You can already see the confusion on the part of Republicans and many on the left.
Obama slows down the Iraq war until we’re basically out of there. No, he didn’t unilaterally do it, and sure, he was “told” not to keep troops in the country any longer, but this is just an excuse.
Look at Libya. We flew some recon and other flights, let our European lapdogs get them some bombing in, and Benghazi aside (a CIA outpost that got attacked, nothing more or less) Qaddafi is gone, and the country is just a mini-Somalia that will eventually pull in Europe/UN/NATO and not us.
Look at Syria. Whatever you want to say about the chemical weapons, we literally outsourced the punishment of Syria to the international community and fucking Russia. Thanks Putin!
So, you get Republicans bitching that Obama is waging all sorts of wars without permission and being a big meanie head. And you have Republicans bitching that Obama isn’t waging enough wars and being a meanie head.
More fracturing of the Republican party by simply letting them bang their heads against any and every wall they can find.
Next up: elect a woman and let her be as reasonable and centrist as Obama, and the Republicans are going to be begging the American people to drown them in the bathtub just like they want to do to the US Government. Because they have no idea of what the fuck is going on.
Maybe the Change of 2008 is just going to take a little while. Maybe the Change of 2008 isn’t the immediate socialization of the US, but the Republican party finally getting to peak wingnut and then self-destructing, simply because a Blah man in the White House has shown how empty they are.
We can only hope.
Do you mean Afghanistan instead of Iraq?
Bush’s failure handed the withdrawal from Iraq to Obama on a silver platter. The Bush administration was forced by events to sign the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq with a date-certain deadline. Obama kept the deadline and did not keep forces in Iraq that Malaki did not want there.
In Afghanistan, Obama asked the generals to give him a plan in exchange for the surge that contained measurable milestones. They gave him BS twice; so he created a plan with surge force levels and measurable milestones. McChrystal came back trying to extort increases in troops without meeting those milestones and then went public with criticism of the commander-in-chief; he got rightly cashiered (politely put as a “retirement”.) Petraeus complained about CIA intelligence he was getting as an excuse for non-performance (after he was effectively demoted and forced to do what McChrystal promised to do). Petraeus’s self-serving actions at CIA apparently angered some other players (Keith Alexander?) and Petraeus’s affair got outed forcing his resignation. Now the guy who was mentioned as a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate is shilling for KKR.
And Obama is using Karzai’s legitimate reluctance to keep US forces in Afghanistan as the means of complete withdrawal. The national security mavens in DC might now notice it yet but the old imperial Silk Road plan for Central Asia’s resources is likely as a practical matter dead and Afghanistan will become more aligned with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), that is China, Russia, and the rest of Asia; it is likely over time that no one country can dominate that organization. And the same evolution is likely to occur with NATO; indeed, Libya seemed to be driven by France and Syria by the UK.
Just as the Reagan Revolution was not readily apparent until the Gingrich Revolution of 1994, I think a similar realignment is happening here. The proof of this will be in the nature of the first Republican (or other opposition party) President to take office after Obama.
And the condition that the international relations are in January 2017 will dramatically affect both domestic and international politics for President Obama’s successor.
A lot of good stuff in this comment. This NOW ongoing realignment will result in the multi-polar world of the near future. THAT world doesn’t function by the old domineering paradigms (win-lose) but by a different sense of basic common humanity (win-win).
The Peace Train is rolling and picking up steam. Too pollyannish for folks? Two words to consider:
Monroe Doctrine
after they have been wrong about everything in the region for more than a decade?
Iraq alone is reason enough not to allow the Repubs and the Neocons anywhere near foreign policy for at least a couple of generations. It was, bluntly, a war of aggression against a country that did not attack us; knowingly entered into based on lies and false “intelligence”; conducted with grossly insufficient invasion forces by civilian dilettantes who ignored military advice about the “boots on the ground” necessary to establish civil order after the fighting; where there was no plan at all after the initial “conquest”; where “the occupying power” made every mistake imaginable guaranteed to alienate the population, create an insurgency, and facilitate a religious/ethnic civil war; and where, thanks to our intervention, the killing and chaos remains a special U.S. gift to the Iraqis that just keeps on giving.
And, I haven’t even mentioned the thousands of dead and horribly wounded Americans and the generations-long harm these losses will have on countless Americans and their families. That continuing impact is one of the reasons we may hope that the Neocons have had their day. That shouldn’t be any “do-overs” for this kind of criminal mistake.