What is the Question?
The congressional hearings into the State Department’s handling of its consulate in Benghazi can become either one of two things: an inquiry into the specific handling of the security at that station or an examination of the Administration’s Middle Eastern policy. Politics will mean the emphasis will be on the former, but the pressing need is for a debate on the latter.
The narrative for the first line of inquiry was provided by the Washington Post’s Ann Gearan. “The fatal attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya last month has become a test of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leadership and a threat to her much-admired legacy as America’s top diplomat just a few months before she plans to step down.”
In the short run it will be all about trying to “get” somebody. From the administration standpoint it will be a search for someone to take the fall.
But the effect of the debacle in Benghazi may have been to make the administration heighten its doubts over the endpoint of the ‘Arab Sprng’.
RIYADH, saudi Arabia — For months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small arms to Syria’s rebels but have refused to provide heavier weapons, such as shoulder-fired missiles, that could allow opposition fighters to bring down government aircraft, take out armored vehicles and turn the war’s tide.
While they have publicly called for arming the rebels, they have held back, officials in both countries said, in part because they have been discouraged by the U.S., which fears that the heavier weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists. …
U.S. support for such weapons transfers is unlikely to materialize any time soon. President Barack Obama’s administration has made clear that it has no desire to deepen its efforts, mostly providing logistical support for the rebels.
Administration officials would not comment on what they are telling their Persian Gulf allies about arming the rebels.
That is a polite way of saying they are too scared to go forward and too frightened to turn back. The tour is going places they don’t like but its too embarrassing to cancel the trip. The fundamental problem with “leading from behind” is now fully evident: somebody else is driving. The Syrian situation is developing without the US being able to directly influence the result. As a result all they can do is firewall it from every side. The US is now bolstering Jordan.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The United States has sent military troops to the Jordan-Syria border to bolster that country’s military capabilities in the event that violence escalates along its border with Syria, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.
Speaking at a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels, Panetta said the U.S. has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border from Syria. The troops are also building a headquarters for themselves.
They’re are bolstering it because they’re afraid the fire might spread. On another front Syria and Turkey are exchanging artillery fire across their common border. Another place to firewall. Meanwhile, the consequences of the administration’s Iraq policy are catastrophically unfolding.
Iraq has signed a multi-billion dollars arms contract with Russia even as Prime Minister Maliki warned Turkey against using NATO to fight Syria. The Voice of Russia gloats:
Interestingly, Iraq’s unexpectedly independent stance sheds a new light on the American occupation of Iraq and its consequences. Obviously, instead of a strong ally, free of Iranian influence and completely drawn into the orbit of American influence, Washington has got in Baghdad the exact opposite of its desires.
“Iraq is trying to get rearmed by Russia, because it was left with no defense capability after Americans left,” Sabah al-Mukhtar, the president of the Arab Lawers Association said. “It was left virtually naked in the defense sense, the Iraqis have got light firing weapons, but not much more. This situation left the country very vulnerable to Iranian influences.”
If you don’t pick up a client, someone else will.
While the focus of the Congressional hearings may be Hillary Clinton’s failure to answer the phone at the metaphorical 3 AM in the morning the more pressing issue was what she was doing while she was on the job. To uninitiated it looks like there isn’t to admire in her ”much admired legacy”.
Fred Hiatt, writing in the Washington Post says there ‘is no escape from the Middle East’. In other words, leading from behind only means you have further to walk to the front when the crunch comes. Hiatt writes:
But Obama too often has left the United States on the sidelines. “It is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” he tells Americans, who understandably are receptive to that message. No doubt he’d like to focus a second term on domestic recovery and on foreign policy challenges he finds congenial: nuclear arms talks with Russia, say, as well as the pivot to Asia.
But recent events suggest that the next president, whether Romney or Obama, will get drawn into messy, difficult dilemmas in the Middle East and Central Asia. The longer a president holds America back from its expected role as leader and shaper of events, the messier the dilemmas will be.
That’s the same as saying that false cures save you nothing. In the end you have to go back to where you should have started in the first place. The Administration is in a situation similar to the doctors of a woman who was mis-diagnosed 30 times by the British National Health Service. She complained of increasing pains but “despite this, the family claim medics at Birmingham City Hospital told her it was just nerve pain.”
By the time they realized it was cancer it was too late.
The question is whether, like a public policy quack, the current administration has been prescribing snake oil instead of telling the patient the harsh truth. Whether medicines like speeches in Cairo, opportunistic credit-grabbing for an ‘Arab Spring’, a PR campaign for ‘world without nuclear weapons’, so-called grand bargains that never happened and promises to win ‘wars of necessity’ in land-locked countries reachable only through Pakistan or Russia did any good.
Because now the Washington Post is telling the public, ‘there is no escape from the Middle East’. That sounds suspiciously like “back to Square One”. Perhaps Mitt Romney hit the spot when he said “hope is not a strategy”.
I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy. We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity.
There are limits to what conjury can do; there are feats which spin cannot perform. Providing international security is one of them. The Greatest Generation learned that lesson the hard way. But they are gone and we’ve forgotten.
Cures lumbago, headaches and Middle Eastern unrest
From Feb 14, 2011
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
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“The congressional hearings into the State Department’s handling of its consulate in Benghazi can become either one of two things: an inquiry into the specific handling of the security at that station or an examination of the Administration’s Middle Eastern policy. Politics will mean the emphasis will be on the former, but the pressing need is for a debate on the latter.”
True as that may be, there will be no reexamination of Middle Eastern policy under Obama. He and his ilk are committed to appeasement. There is no ‘fight or flight’, only flight for moral cowards. So there will be no debate. If Obama wins, our Middle Eastern policy will remain exactly what it has been, growing increasingly untenable while simultaneously denial of reality will increase exponentially.
The only way to turn from this path is for Romney to be elected. Ironically, Obama is completely correct when he asserts that this election is about choosing between two opposing paths.
If Obama is reelected, these congressional hearings may in time geld the administration even further but Obama, true ideologue that he is, will stay the course.
No American arms deals with Iraq? No oil deals either. No Status of Forces Agreement, no . . . . nothing, just “get out.”
The problematic situation Bush created could have been salvaged by a savvy successor, but we got an inept ideologue instead. Obama threw it all away. I hope both Romney and Ryan make much of this in the remaining debates.
For all our blood and treasure we got bupkiss.
What is the question?
Given the damage done, what is the best path forward?
The R2P canard combined with the murder of Ambassador Stevens and hand-over of all the intelligence files in the consulate is an epic failure of US leadership.
Nobody in DC wants to go to jail for perjury so they’re spilling their guts in the Congressional hearing. So far we’ve learned that there were no demonstrations of any kind preceding the coordinated attack on the consulate. Obama, Hilary and Rice were lying through their teeth by claiming that there was a Cairo copy-cat movie demonstration and that the attack “just happened.”
Of course the WH and State are blaming faulty intelligence. They didn’t know that AQ types were operating in Benghazi? Then who the hell were they giving all those weapons to? They didn’t have any idea who they were killing or helping in the R2P operation?
Even if Obama were acting under direct instructions from the Islamists, Libya and the Arab Spring could not have gone better for them. Non-Islamist rulers and military establishments get removed from power leaving the path clear to state control for a well organized Muslim Brotherhood patiently waiting in the wings. Obama sends $500 million to Morsi to spread around to his MB buddies in Gaza and the Sinai. US intelligence files get “liberated” in Benghazi so the bad guys know for sure who to put on their hit lists. AQ gets street cred for whacking a US Ambassador (Obama owed them that for whacking Osama).
The only way this makes sense is if Obama is on the other team or he’s delusional enough to believe that he’s acting out a B movie script.
0bama would throw everyone and everything he can under the bus, Romney needs to help him saw the branch from under his (0bama) own @ss. Hope there are a lot of people in the State Department and Intel departments with date/time stamped emails and notices… Romney/Ryan have a target rich environment! You know the “Notice” to resign are being typed as we speak, the Rats are gonna flee the sinking ship any time now!
It’s Musical chair time right now but soon it will be a “race to who’s left holding the bag”!
… has become a test of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leadership and a threat to her much-admired legacy as America’s top diplomat …
Keep hitting that Reset button, Hilda.
I think the question has to be what happened that resulted in the ambassador’s death. That leads to the dumb idea that we should have pulled out the ambassador’s security AGAINST HIS REQUEST in the interests of normalizing operations, or whatever. That should be sufficient unto the day.
Try the Eject button, Hilda.
let’s not let bush off the hook, he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory the way he setup the iraq “war”, starting with no declaration of war, continuing on through with a battle plan that maximized U.S. casualties. which isn’t to say obama is worse — he is — but bush bungled things just fine on his own.
”Meanwhile, the consequences of the administration’s Iraq policy are catastrophically unfolding.”
This is one case where it’s probably fair to say Obama inherited a big problem. He may also have made it worse.
I’m about half-way through ”The End Game”, a history of the Iraq war and it was a mess from the start at the upper levels of authority. Bush saw it as a good vs evil situation in which the forces of good had to win. He believed that a genuine yearning for true democracy beat in every Muslim heart.
He, and many top generals (but not all) believed that once the dictator was gone we could quickly turn things back over to the Iraqis and watch freedom flourish.
It’s rather detailed and ponderous but worth taking the time, in digestible doses.
“From the administration standpoint it will be a search for someone to take the fall.”
That should be easy. Didn’t GWB shape policy in the region for eight years?
“If you don’t pick up a client, someone else will.:”
Obama and his team intended not to exploit what gains we achieved in Iraq. Pure hubris. Their focus was to kill Bin Laden at any cost and to lose OIF by any means necessary. They screwed US successes for partisan political reasons. Bloody hell.
“You know the “Notice” to resign are being typed as we speak, the Rats are gonna flee the sinking ship any time now!”
Well it is about time that government takes a haircut like the rest of us rubes. We don’t have to start with those who are not pulling their own weight. We can start with those who are rowing in the direction of fascism. We can focus on value and productivity later. Counter-value is the issue now. Let the work that Porter Goss started be completed.
Welcome to the crappy economy that the rest of us have been suffering through. Your unemployment check ought to leave you with enough to settle your estate. Don’t worry, the American people will make sure that you have enough to feed and cloth your self and keep a roof over your head while you train to be cheaper and more productive than Chinese Apple employees. Maybe you can take over the local Mexican drug gang rackets. Enjoy.
I’m actually beginning to believe that Obama doesn’t care if he wins re-election. He’s probably thinking that he can do the speaking thing the rest of his life and still make good money. Unfortunately, it’s the people around him that got him elected that need him to win so that they can soak up more cash. And he probably realizes by now that is things really go to shit, they will throw him under the bus…
but bush bungled things just fine on his own
This may be true but it was the right campaign, in the right location. It is adjacent to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Kuwait and the Gulf. It was atop the split line between Sunni and Shi’a. It was a potentially a place where you could create a rival power center to Iran.
The Korean War was a botched job. But South Korea was, is and remains in the right place and therefore it remains valuable. Why would anyone give a damn about Egypt if it were not for location and the Suez Canal? We will be daily reminded of the power of location in the headlines. What do they involve? Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. In other words all the places he could once reach before he decided he didn’t need to reach. This is now the locus of Obama’s woes. He could have dominated the area for the good. Power is how you lead from the front.
When he left Iraq and redeployed to landlocked Afghanistan was there an option to leading from behind? No he didn’t need power. Palaver would do the job. The Washington Post has already come around to realizing this is not true. Before too long I expect everyone else to come around to the obvious.
And when you project power it comes from a place. It comes from physical things and objects. It doth not spring from the mouth of man.
What does the State Department say now? “Of course we always knew that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Why we knew it from the first”. It’a amazing to see. Any day now they’ll say: “why of course we know that the region is critical. That’s why we’re deploying to Syria, Jordan and Turkey and we are negotiating for access to Iraq.”
Remember they are never wrong and they will never be wrong. They are the smartest people in the world.
“Iraq is trying to get rearmed by Russia, because it was left with no defense capability after Americans left,” Sabah al-Mukhtar, the president of the Arab Lawers Association said. “It was left virtually naked in the defense sense, the Iraqis have got light firing weapons, but not much more. This situation left the country very vulnerable to Iranian influences.”
If you don’t pick up a client, someone else will.”
That ‘s a nice Romney debate point.
The real substantive debate about MIddle East policy can wait. It will be all about politics until the election and you won’t get into a real debate about policy with these clowns anyway. After the first tuesday in November, we hopefully we will have a new President who can rethink what the hell we are and have been doing over there.
bush could have declared war formally, flattened every iraqi city (with very few american casualties), taken control of the food and water supplies, and claimed the oil as the price for supporting terrorism. that would have settled the entire region down for several generations. but he paid a steep price (with other people’s lives and money) for exactly nothing. i am not against taking iraq — it is strategically valuable — but i have nothing but criticism for the way bush went about it.
before you defend bush on anything, keep in mind his remarks after “looking into putin’s eyes”
If the WH stable of willing fall guys realize that as of November 6, 2012, there will be no bus to be thrown under, they may well turn on the present bus driver. No one will go down quietly on behalf of a loser-there’s no upside and the downside-jail, civil suits and public humiliation, is so unpleasant. Just like in criminal cases, it is important to be the first one to turn. Obama’s got troubles, but in addition, he’s got to worry about one turncoat causing stampede of other turncoats. Another bad debate and a “descent cascade” may emerge.
Neil Fergusen seemed to be one of the few rational voices
in the pubic sphere a year ago. He had the audacity to
question a lack of US State Department strategy regarding
the Arab Spring.
Panel at the Morning Joe treated him with disdain, then. (and now?)
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/41577220#41577220
Is it not ironic that Hillary Clinton gets her own “Blackhawk Down” incident? It was the first and one of the most glaring examples of Bill’s ineptness.
The difference is, in Somalia the U.S. Military gave better then they got, despite being denied armor by the SECDEF.
In Libya we did not even do that much. Unlike Mogadishu there was no honor in what occured at Bengazi, no Americans fighting their way to the relief of their brothers. Those that did did so honorably, but needlessly, and that was that.
The Left struggled to have that happen in Iraq as well, in in the end succeeded to a degree. But in their real “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” they did not even get the satisfaction of the helicopters plucking our ambassador and staff off the roof. There was no roof left.
Like Somalia, it was a pointless mission being done for optics back home. And they still screwed it up even worse.
I think Bush was compromised by the Saudis in addition to his own failings. He never identified the enemy except obliquely. He declared Islam the “religion of peace”. He may have backed the wrong horse in Georgia.
Hence he failed in many ways.
But ultimately the US was in possession of the field in Iraq. In that fact lies the tragedy of the current situation. If the surge had failed then would be nothing to regret. But it succeeded, like Ridgeways counterattack succeeded after the Chinese intervention. Bush’s position was no worse than Truman’s in 1945, or indeed in 1952, after having “lost” Eastern Europe and China. But Truman had the sense to hang on to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea which Presidents down through Eisenhower to Reagan had the wit to continue until the Cold War was won.
The US succeeds by pursuing a basically sound strategic thread. Mistakes by individual Presidents are survivable in the long run if they keep to the basically correct path. The problem it seems to me is this: where is the enemy’s center of gravity?
What is Obama’s answer to that question? Has he even asked that question? Is it in Afghanistan? Is it in Pakistan? Is in sub-Saharan Africa? My own view is simple. The enemy center of gravity is in the locus of ideology, religion and oil. It is in the Middle East and will remain there for some time. To win in the Middle East you have to develop rival energy resources and be able to dominate the area with raw physical power. The more you can project power, the less you will have to do it.
And then you can win the new cold war over the decades.
I see beating radical Islam as a project analogous to winning the Cold War. It will take fifty years, till around 2051 if a basic strategy was consistently followed from Sept 11, 2001. By 2045 I would have expected a scattering of prosperous Arab states whose power was based on trade, industry and science with an oil-depleted backward Saudi Arabia on its last legs, and with Islam in the area generally become a religion of personal morality; a positive force for those who believed in its non-virulent versions. There would be two great Shi’a centers. One in prosperous Iraq and a moribund one in Revolutionary Iran.
Then at around the middle of the 21st century the tipping will be reached. It’s a rough plan anyway.
Why not? This is what happened in East/West Germany, North/South Korea. It would have happened in the Middle East too, where in 2051 Israel would be just another country in the region.
What happened in 2008 with Obama is analogous to Truman’s successor abandoning the entire Cold War strategy and rushing off to every point of the compass with a new transcendent strategy. If that happened the Berlin Wall may never have fallen and the feared nuclear exchange may have occurred after all.
“From the administration standpoint it will be a search for someone to take the fall”.
BHO is looking for room under the bus for HRC.
So we do not want heavy weapons to end up in the hands of terrorists.
Yet the terrorists are a big part of the opposition forces. If they win they have a big share in an entire nation with advanced weapons, including chemical warheads and the missiles to deliver them. The US holds no leverage there. Our moves are entirely internal political and based on the elections and the enemy knows that.
All along I have thought that we never considered the idea that Syria was better off from our strategic perspective as it was. Maybe Putin has been right. The Lebanese civil war is still not ended. The Syrian one is just getting warmed up.
Obama’s successful con was based on the three edged sword of democracy. (Two edged swords won’t cut it). Before they can screw up, politicians first have to get elected. That’s the first sword edge (good). To get elected they must tell people things the majority of people want to hear. There lie the second and third sword edges (one bad and one good) because people may prefer to hear nonsense or prefer to hear common sense from politicians.
Having wounded myself as sword metaphors took me over the edge, I remember that commenters here have pointedly remarked that the sharpest questions of all may be:
“what kind of America wants to hear what Obama has to say?” and
“how can America become the kind of country that does not want to hear what Obama has to say?”
Changing Presidents is a first step but only Americans themselves can change what they want to hear from their electoral candidates. Casting unwieldy weapons aside and bravely striding onto a new metaphor, there is a climb ahead up a long staircase for Americans. The sooner the climb starts the better.
Wretchard @18 wrote, “The problem it seems to me is this: where is the enemy’s center of gravity”?
I nominate the Khomenist radical Islamist government of Iran. W/o their practical example of success from the 1979 revolution, to sailing forward on nukes, to global political influence via terrorism and subversion, Sayed Qutob would be just another dead scribbler.
IMHO, if we take out te Khomenist regime it will be a dramatic example to the Muslim world of the humiliation of radical Islamists. W/o the challenge of an aggressive and radical Shia power the KSA royalty will go back to sampling bourbon and Moldovan prostitutes.
In Obama’s World, the enemy’s center of gravity is somewhere in South Dakota. Self sufficient in food, energy, and attitude. Can’t have that . . . .
As for the State Dept turning on Fair Hillary and the lot of them, consider this headline – “Republicans claim State Department bungled Benghazi.” Now try, without laughing, to picture some mid-level flunky saying “Yes, those Republicans are correct, and I stand with them!”
cjm @ 8: but bush bungled things just fine on his own
Yes, he did. I agree with all you say. I agree with all of wretchard’s qualifications. And yet, Bush did not have an entirely free hand, he had a Democratic obstructionist Congress that I still believe is unprecedented in American history, and much of his restraint I think was based on getting them to go along and keeping them at least somewhat on board, not to mention the UN such as they played a role, at least did not oppose. And as wretchard says, Bush did what he did to get and keep Saudi support as well, such as it was.
Much of the error I also assign to the JCS who served Bush poorly, and Obambus not much better. As wretchard says, it was at least the right battle. And finally, I’m quite certain Bush knew what it would cost him, and it did, and he went ahead anyway. It wasn’t pretty and it haunts us still, but these are the extenuating circumstances.
Perhaps Bush could have solicited and executed a more aggressive initial strategy, and certainly better ROE, and he could have refrained from yacking about “the religion of peace”. But there may yet be some benefits to his excessive faith and restraint, nonetheless. One can only hope.
“bush could have declared war formally, flattened every iraqi city (with very few american casualties), taken control of the food and water supplies, and claimed the oil as the price for supporting terrorism. that would have settled the entire region down for several generations.”
The naivete and sheer ignorance of those assertions is breathtaking.
Congress declares war, not the President. Bush didn’t have the political majority in Congress needed to declare war.
Flattening every Iraqi city ala Dresden was a political non-starter, it would have led to a huge backlash from the American public and the democrats. The MSM would have been screaming about revenge being Bush’s motive and John Kerry would have, as a result won the 2004 election.
Most importantly, it would have completely discredited Bush’s attempt at bringing democracy to Muslim nations. The fact that events proved that to be an unattainable goal is irrelevant, that’s what Bush believed; that “unalienable rights” meant that all men (en mass) seek life, liberty and the individual pursuit of happiness.
Furthermore, seizing control of the food and water would have meant it was now our responsibility to feed 25 million Iraqi’s, an impossible logistical nightmare. We would have been directly responsible for any shortage in supplies.
‘Claiming’ the oil would have lent great credibility to the left’s assertion that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a “war for oil”.
The simple truth is that nothing but time (generations of continued exposure to the west) and or massive nuclear retaliation can “settle the region”. Tribal conflict and religious strife defines the region.
Currently and for the foreseeable future, brutal repression is the only demonstrable method for settling the region.
But brutal repression by the US is a political non-starter.
In a representative democracy, political power rules and political power means getting the majority to follow, without that majority support one has no power and can accomplish exactly nothing.
Obama did not have to fail. All he had to do in order to succeed was not to screw the pooch as badly as he did. He just had to hang on to the gains of his predecessors. Keep faith with allies of long standing. Stand clear of enterprise and innovation.
He would have finished up at least as well regarded as Truman. Not one of the great greats, but a successful president in historical terms. How he managed to mess it up is really the question.
A nation as big as the United States progresses on its underlying strengths, not on the sudden dance moves and brainstorms of a President or two. The game is steady as she goes as long as its in the right direction. You let the ship of state have its head and change course only when there is clear need to do so.
But this requires a sense of history and continuity that one accepts upon taking office and passes on upon leaving it. Back in graduate school they used to say “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. There has to be a compelling reason to redecorate the policy manor. And woe betide those who repaint things on whim or renovate rooms because they feel like it. History is not like that. It’s easier to screw things up by folly than to find the Northwest Passage where no one has ever found it before.
Well Hillary may know that now. Or maybe she doesn’t.
“He may have backed the wrong horse in Georgia.” I guess the repetition of my Tie Eater jokes have taken their toll. In any case, here’s a trustworthy quote from the Senator from the Great State of Kentucky:
Fortunately for Obama Israel cannot simply shift its main arms supplier from the U.S. to Russia on a dime, but if Obama did get a second term, the Central Bank of Israel might start stockpiling those German, Russian and Chinese-backed SDRs instead of U.S. dollars. With the neocons who once considered themselves to be Israel’s best friends in D.C. left to mutter et tu, Jerusalem?
What is the Question?
Why have we been talking about the Moslem world non stop for decades. Europe gets into the headlines occasionally. So does China. Occasionally Russia. Sometimes the new world or Mexico, Australia India Africa. Richard may do a story from time to time on the Philippines or WWII or space the final frontier.
Its not just Wretchard’s blog or the War on Terror. I’ll bet if you did an american newspaper magazine article search by keyword for the last several decades you’d discover that the number of articles on the Moslem world has been steadily rising both absolutely and relative to the rest of the world.
…there isn’t much to admire in her…
Yep, Bush owed too much to the Saud’s, so his thinking was warped. Most of us realized it at the time, but never dreamed the consequences would lead to an Obama. We shoulda known better.
How to ensure it’ll never recur is the question. Idiots voting isn’t so much the problem unless they’re voting FOR idiots.
Spindok #20:
“All along I have thought that we never considered the idea that Syria was better off from our strategic perspective as it was.”
Well, I think the whole region was better off as Bush left it than it is now. People complained that they did not understand what the Bush Plan was for the ME but any idiot could see what it was: an Arab Spring heavily influenced by the USA. Bush was not going to tell the Saudis that he was going to pull the rug out from under their house of cards, but he was.
What the Obama Admin did was engage without a Plan. Indeed, it appears that they thought that the very idea of having a Plan was too Bushlike (back to the Peggy Noonan quote).
It’s like the female university head, who said that they did not encourage the “publish or perish” concept among their faculty because it made the professors who did not publish feel bad.
They seem to be saying “We are not math people. And we don’t do plans.” Indeed, Obamacare and the stimulus package show no evidence of planning. Planning would make the people who can’t plan feel bad, and that is most of the Administration and all of its base.
Bush had hope and a plan for the ME, one that was working. Obama has only hope for the ME.
#25 hahaha, the irony in your post has cheered my day, thanks. you can’t possibly be American, with that kind of “analysis”.
W’s comment @18 beautifully expresses thoughts I have been trying to put into words for years. Those who have pushed for exit strategies seem to have forgotten that there are 35,000 troops in South Korea nearly 60 years after the armistice. We still have bases in Japan and Germany. So what would have been strange or wrong about leaving 30,000 – 40,000 troops in Iraq?
The long view is just as W stated: that we succeeded in the cold war of 1946-1992 because both Democrats and Republicans loved America and knew it was crucial for American dominance to remain if the world were to be safe.
The trouble with the present course is that, beginning with the Bush 43 administration, Democrats thought it was crucial for American dominance to diminish. W said that Obama would have been as successful as Truman had he merely continued the prior policies and maintained continuity. I say that Bush 43 would have been seen as Truman, loathed at the time but vindicated by history, had Obama maintained continuity.
Alas, we are at a bad crossroads. One path leads to slowing the decline. The other leads to eclipse.
23. 2009Refugee As for the State Dept turning on Fair Hillary and the lot of them, consider this headline – “Republicans claim State Department bungled Benghazi.” Now try, without laughing, to picture some mid-level flunky saying “Yes, those Republicans are correct, and I stand with them!”
I can well imagine it. These are the same guys that have to go live in some of these places for years, often with their families. They know perfectly well that their lives are at risk. The are willing to tolerate a certain amount of risk, it is part of the job description after all. But at a certain point when the prospect of torture and death for themselves and their families moves from a low to a substantially higher probability, the equation changes. Ambassador Stevens’ murder, you can be sure, generated a lot of hate and discontent within Foggy Bottom’s extended family. I am absolutely sure that a very heated discussion is going on within the Department, especially now that it is clear that HRC with the Administration’s (at least tacit)approval basically hung Stevens out to dry. The Department will clean up its act or find itself with a critical shortage of trained Foreign Service Officers at all levels.
I found the Bush administration strategy sound. He correctly identified Iran as part of the axis of evil. Looking at a map, Turkey is on Iran’s north side. They weren’t going to help us, but they weren’t going to help Iran. Pakistan could only supply additional cannon fodder to Iran. Afghanistan was occupied by a light force and not a good path to supply an invasion force into Iran. That leaves Iraq with a large common border to Iran plus having sea ports. Saddam had to go as well. Iran would have been next on the list had the Democrats been even slightly supportive. Bush’s feet were cut out from under him and he had to stop at Iraq. Democrats likely saw the Mideast really calming down if Iran fell- who else was going to prop up the Palestinians. Couldn’t have a Republican show up Clinton and Carter’s useless peace efforts.
Too many quickly blame Bush for doing things wrong or half @ss, there is blame for Bush letting it go in his last two years when the Demoncrats ran the House and Senate and the MSM propaganda Machine had everything Bush did as wrong, Bush had little room to maneuver, But I disagree with most, Bush had to fight a horrific battle against the MSM and the traitorous Intelligence community and Senators in the first six years of his administration, a MSM propaganda machine so strong it was able to capture the House and Senate for the Demoncrats on the Grounds we (US) were doing everything, every move wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet history bears out we (US) had won in both theaters, Bush handed a no brainer to 0bama and 0bama turned them both into lost causes! Bush will most likely come out in history as the best leader America could have wanted at the time, Bush walked into a mild recession and yet brought back a roaring economy, fought a very nasty enemy that has no honor or taboo’s and prevailed. Bush did grow the Government which I personally was not for but he did against great odds at home and abroad keep America incredible safe! (unlike his successor who had attacks on American soil more than once in just four years)
“a threat to her much-admired legacy as America’s top diplomat”
Thank you. We needed a good laugh.
We will not get the truth by waiting for bureaucrats to turn on Obama. We may get the truth when bureaucrats turn on their real enemies. The agencies in DC are trained and equipped for war. State DoD CIA DoJ etc. etc. etc., as the King of Siam said. All of them right down to the Post Office and SSA have been perfecting their cultures and practicing for combat for decades. Their enemies are each other. Why do you think they’ve ordered all that ammo?
Obama did not have to fail. All he had to do in order to succeed was not to screw the pooch as badly as he did.
Well now, just to be fair, I think a few more specifics are needed to define Obambus’ failure. Need to make a list, check it twice, mark domestic and foreign issues, and then net it all out. Especially versus what President McCain might have done differently, and how that would have worked.
Obambus’ greatest “failings” may be in process and attitude. He pulled US troops out of Iraq too fast, and is probably doing the same in Afghanistan, and yet there is a reasonable thread of conservative thought that would have pulled them out just as fast or faster. Etc.
What it looks like to me is that in almost every case, you could count on Obambus to err on the same side, and to not play well with the opposition. It’s that latter fact that is the most offensive, but he shares it with the entire Democratic party “leadership” over the past ten to twenty years.
He really was handed some bad cards domestically, and a tough situation globally. A lot of issues are still open, but an objective current evaluation of his regime to date might earn an affirmative action C from a majority of historians.
And if it had been a President Hildabeast? Try that on your abacus.
36. CharlesWhite
imho Bush’s border policies would have got him shot for treason if tried a couple decades back.
Even now, nobody can bear to listen to his brother because everyone knows he’s only got one foot on this side of the border.
The criminally incompetent and completely inarticulate dolt Charlene Lamb will be the sacrificial lamb here. If she represents the quality of people who have ANYTHING to do with US diplomatic security, then our diplomats need to be very, very worried about their personal safety. On the political side, Clinton and Rice need to go.
Wretchard is spot on at #26. (I know that’s shocking). The strength and greatness of the U.S. can make a Chief Executive relatively successful if they don’t screw with the system TOO MUCH. The country can survive a little screwing but not a gang rape. Clinton crows that he balanced the budget-BS! The economy, specifically the tech-bubble balanced it. Clinton was still saying in the late 90′s that he “believed we could have a balanced budget” in “the near future,”(he kept changing the estimate but it was always between 7-10 years). He did nothing except either not screwing things up too much or being prevented from doing so by the ’94 election. He surely abandoned universal healthcare at the drop of a hat and was smart enough to have Hillary send up that trial balloon.
re #32 – cjm, whether Geoffrey is American or not, he made far more sense than you’ve made on this thread. You got your ass handed to you.
i think obama can win, but this guy from australia predicts these kind of political events, and is eery accurate, see what he says who will win the current US election http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac4LnNrVtic very interesting.
#42 so your opinion == my ass? sounds about right.
#25, Geofrey Britain.
“bush could have declared war formally, flattened every iraqi city (with very few american casualties), taken control of the food and water supplies, and claimed the oil as the price for supporting terrorism. that would have settled the entire region down for several generations.”
“The naivete and sheer ignorance of those assertions is breathtaking.”
You are probably correct in your assessment of that proposed solution but, unfortunately, it is no more ignorant or naive than the concept of a “moderate Muslim” or “Islamic Democracy” or any other solution that has yet been proposed.
The sad fact is that, as with the Nazis, nothing short of total annihilation of Islam will solve the “Islamic” problem.
emma @43: Sorry, much as I like Aussies, this guy on your link just kept repeating the same prediction over and over again, with a few notes about things being controlled by a secret cadre thrown in. He gave no substantial reasons for his conclusions. I see no reason to take him seriously.
Geoffrey B@25,
Naturally, the conditions you describe may be accurate, and will remain so until the US has been hit one-too-many-times by radical Islam. Then all your considerations go away.
An Iran with nukes&missles adds considerable accelerant to the simmering ummah.
With fewer and fewer conventional forces, our response options are severely limited, while Islam is starting small wars worldwide.
Bush did state correctly: you’re either with US or against US.
Not that it’s relevant but I’m a natural born American and a Vietnam Veteran.
#45 & 47,
I quite agree that Bush’s belief that democracy could be grafted onto Middle Eastern societies has been proven wrong. I was simply explaining what motivated Bush to do what he did, to correct cjm’s ludicrous assertions.
Yes, the condition of a “house divided” will remain until the US is hit one-too-many times by radical jihadists. Which will happen, the FBI assesses the chance of a coming WMD attack upon the US, as 100%.
Yes, Iran getting the bomb is a game changer.
Wretchard’s Three Conjectures remains valid, though even at this late date I believe that eventuality can be avoided.
IMHO, the way to avoid that is to issue an ultimatum to Iran; agree to allow UN inspectors complete access to all nuclear facilities within 24 hours. If they don’t, bunker buster bomb the major facilities and demand the same condition again. If they don’t agree and allow the inspectors in, nuke those major facilities.
Immediately after that, announce a new US doctrine that holds Islam’s holy sites hostage to jihadists good behavior; Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, the city of Qom and Mecca, etc.
Radical jihadists only value one thing; the survival of Islam.
Islam’s holy sites are of inordinate importance to Muslims, indeed pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, so the most devout of Muslims, the radical jihadists… won’t risk them, once they are convinced that we are serious about this new doctrine. They also won’t believe we’ll level their holy sites until we do so as an example. So the next terrorist attack with loss of life would result in the complete destruction of the Dome of the Rock.
The proper attitude to take is simple; the unapologetic ‘strong man’.
Right after we level the Dome say, “OK, now you know we’re serious, do you want to ‘up the ante’ or bet it all and put Mecca on the table too?”
Given the decentralized nature of everything Islam, how do we convince every single Islamist? Surely there’s going to be one or two who either think, They wouldn’t go THAT far, or This will surely cause Allah to finally intervene…
#49 Kirk Parker
While I do not think that we have the cultural cojones to do anything so deliberately … intolerant … as to fight back before forced into the last ditch; the response to that outlier obviously has to be the Three Conjectures. Final and complete. I actually believe that unless the Israelis intervene with their own Three Conjectures the end game is going to be one too many WMD attacks on us, or technically and highly theoretically Britain and France [if they themselves re-learn what cojones are after they are hit]; and the response will be either capitulation or thumping them into hummus. If the Left is in power at the time or close enough to power to have the media scaring the RINO’s, I’m giving better odds on capitulation.
Subotai Bahadur
#49,
While I agree with Bahadur that we lack the consensus needed, to demonstrate the cojones the strategy I advocate calls for, I don’t see the decentralized nature of radical jihadists as an obstacle to that strategy.
The doctrine of holding Islam’s holy sites hostage to jihadists good behavior would be challenged and we would have to follow through with our threats. I’d make it incremental, which is why I would start with the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred Islamic holy site, to demonstrate that we had the needed resolve to follow through with our threat.
At that point, I’d tell Muslims that its not our job to convince their radicals to behave but theirs. Let the Imams and Mullahs declare that any further terrorist attacks are forbidden, that they risk a fatwa upon their heads if they place any other holy sites at risk. That radicals risk eternal damnation if Mecca, etc. is lost. Use their beliefs against them.
Make them responsible and then hold them to it.
Geoffrey,
At least your solution is better than just getting to the Third Conjecture. Not holding out a lot of hope that we could begin to pull it off, alas…
Wow, this is the first time I have seen comments all over the place on this site. Usually, they are far more reasoned and within a certain range, but I guess we ARE talking about the ME, right?
I think it all misses the point. The real problem is right here at home in the USA. We are the biggest kid on the block. Almost nothing can be considered in the world without factoring in America… and we are not stable. We have a deep cultural conflict raging, a cultural civil war. It’s heating up, too, as the traditionalists start hitting back.
This is part and parcel of our politics. Everything gets subordinated to this conflict. There is no way to have a consistent long-term foreign policy, when we are so divided. One side will oppose what the other side is doing, just because it is the other side. Pure partisanship rules the day. It’s just like the tribalism in 2nd- and 3rd-world countries.
Could Bush’s policies have worked? Maybe, if he had truly understood the nature of the domestic conflict, but it was not yet so plain as it is today. Nothing has a chance of working, though. With everything politicized, even business, nothing can work. This conflict has to be settled first, and it has to be fast. We cannot continue in this vein. Unfortunately, I just do not see that happening. We’ll continue to just fiddle while the world burns.
America brought prosperity to the world like it has never seen. With America’s decline, the prosperity also declines, like an old balloon wilting. To borrow from Heinlein, this is known as “bad luck”. The future is bleak. Bad times are coming. Actually, they are already here. Worse times are coming.