Oliver Stone’s Moment of Sanity
I haven’t enjoyed much (any?) of anything Oliver Stone has written since Talk Radio — until now:
Filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick criticize Obama’s presidency in a forthcoming book called The Untold History of the United States, saying he has too often mimicked Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
“The country Obama inherited was indeed in shambles, but Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse,” write Stone and Kuznick, reports Politico. “Rather than repudiating the policies of Bush and his predecessors, Obama has perpetuated them.”
All that talk about a “net spending cut” and “cutting the deficit in half” after going “line by line” through the budget? Those were just words, with an expiration date even sooner than most. I spent eight years railing against Bush’s spending and deficits, only to see Obama double down on almost every one of Bush’s idiot policies. And I do mean double. Give this guy another four years and he will double the ten trillion dollar mess he inherited. It’s already baked in.
But I understand that. Barack Obama is an unreconstructed old school vile prog. He lives to spend other people’s money while lecturing his unwilling donors about how morally inferior they are to himself. It’s what vile progs do, when they aren’t playing the race card and waging class warfare to distract from the mess they’ve created.
But there’s another part I don’t understand: What the flying blank at a rolling donut is Obama’s foreign policy? On the one hand, we have Surge With an Expiration Date™ (there’s that two-word phrase again) in Afghanistan. One of the fingers on that hand — you can guess which one — is the semi-if-at-all-legal Drone War against al Qaeda’s leadership. But then there’s the other hand, blogged today by our own Roger L. Simon:
Were Obama and others covering up more than their ineptitude? Just what was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi that day? Why had he left the Libyan capital to meet with the Turkish ambassador on the anniversary of September 11?
Rumors abound. According to Admiral Lyons writing in the Washington Times,
…one of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable SAMs – to Islamists and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. In an excellent article, Aaron Klein states that Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Further, according to Egyptian security sources, Stevens played a “central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria.”
Lyons adds, citing a Clare Lopez article at RadicalIslam.org,
…that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with our Benghazi mission. During the terrorist attack, the warehouses were probably looted. We do not know what was there and if it was being administrated by our two former Navy SEALs and the CIA operatives who were in Benghazi. Nonetheless, the equipment was going to hardline jihadis.
Do we know that for sure? I certainly don’t, although on the face of it sounds like a “Fast & Furious” scandal on a global scale with extraordinary geopolitical implications.
Is the President — literally, man — taking with one drone from al Qaeda while giving with the other? Is he leading from his behind again in Syria by arming radical Islamists with heavy weapons that could one day be turned against our jets? (Military or civilian models, take your pick.)
Let’s take a look at Obama’s foreign policy in toto.
• If debt really is our greatest national security risk, then Obama has screwed us, but good. When interest rates rise, as they eventually must, the payments on our existing debt will exceed our total defense budget. That’s just to cover the vig. That ought to keep America’s hands tied for a few generations.
• The Surge With an Expiration Date™ has made the Taliban the “strong horse” in Afghanistan.
• Obama created a power vacuum in Libya, currently being filled by al Qaeda.
• Obama exhausted the French and British air forces in the process of achieve that Libyan power vacuum. Asking them to take the lead on bombing Libya was like asking your neighbor with the heart conditional and your buddy with the bum knee to move your Hide-a-Bed for you.
• Obama is arming al Qaeda-type elements in Syria.
• Obama’s Drone War has enraged the Arab Street.
• Obama sold out our ally in Egypt, devolving power there away from the military and towards the Muslim Brotherhood and the streets.
• WTF has he been doing in Iran? Promising to recognize their right to nuclear technology while pursuing normalized relationships while (belatedly) pursuing sanctions forced on him by Congress? Do I have that right?
• Putting half a trillion dollars in additional defense cuts on the table through sequestration, which he now tries to deny.
• Shutting down American energy production while Russia gets rich on high prices.
So. Russia gets enough cash to go back to being all frisky, and Obama fiddles while the euro burns. About the only thing he’s gotten right is China. Of course, China talks enough smack (and positions enough ballistic missiles) to send its increasingly nervous neighbors right back into American arms no matter who might be in the White House. Sorry, but I find it difficult to praise Obama for this one, where winning is pretty much the default position.
Whether intentional or not, Obama seems to have a foreign policy of “spreadin’ the wealth around a little bit.” Or in this case, the power. Massive debt will soon hamstring what America can do, while the Arab nations become better armed, and more responsive to the psychotic desires of the Arab Street. It’s like community organizing for murderous religious whackos.
Our President seems to have pretty effectively boxed us in and reduced our power, while setting new bunches of well-armed crazies loose in the Crazy Violent Death Capital of the World. (Excluding Chicago.) And I suppose it goes without saying that Obama has shown the world that he’s willing to watch, live on TV, while Americans get killed so long as it doesn’t upset him politically.
You don’t suppose that doesn’t have schemers scheming new schemes in capitals and caves around the world now, do you?
Is it fecklessness? Is it on purpose? In practical terms, there’s no real difference. But it does mean two things for sure.
• The next President is going to have a bigger foreign policy mess to clean up than Reagan did after Carter.
• The next President had better be sworn in January of 2013, because we can’t afford another four years of this violent devolution of power away from America (and our friends) and towards the madmen of Araby.
The consulate assault lasted nearly seven hours. There were enough terrorists to quickly overwhelm the few armed men in the compound. What were they doing all that time?
Getting shot to pieces by two Navy Seals. King Leonidas and Colonel Travis had to flip a coin that night in Valhalla to decide who’s table they’d sit at.
Both the American and Turkish embassies are in Tripoli, on the other side of Libya. So if the ambassadors were merely having tea and crumpets, there was no need to go to Benghazi — the crumpets there aren’t so good that you go into a vipers nest where the British and Red Cross bugged out months before.
I was telling my Obama supporter friend that Obama’s Chicago based world view wasn’t going to scale and he’d be in way over his head. And this was back in ’07 when Hillary was still heir-apparent. The there was this other friend who voted for Obama because, being a black guy, he’d not back down from a fight and kick-ass.
At some point incompetence becomes indistinguishable from malice.
semi-if-at-all-legal Drone War against al Qaeda’s leadership
See, that’s the one thing in the President’s foreign policy that I have absolutely no problem with.
An actively hostile military group (being un-uniformed just makes then unlawful combatants, not owed any courtesies)?
Their leadership are thus absolutely valid targets, and there’s no “law” against firing missiles at them.
(And if the UN General Assembly declared that such a “law” suddenly existed, the proper response is to tell the GA to go copulate itself with sand.)
I don’t have a problem with it either, but candidate Obama (the 2008 model) would have.
I’m on the record in several places with my approval for the Drone War. The problem is, it isn’t part of a larger strategy. If you’re going to stir the hornet’s nest as Obama is doing, you should also have a can of Raid — instead of bigger weapons for the hornets.
The drone war is great. But you’re right Steve, killing al Queda leaders as targets of opportunity is not a strategy. And those guys are gonna learn to adapt to the drones.
Someone should have sat Obama down and explained to him that, in a war, the enemy gets a vote. And Benghazi was the military equivalent of Wisconsin/Scott Walker for him.
I suspect that the “strategy” in the drone war is that it does not risk invoking the War Powers Act. No messy convincing Congress to authorize committing troops. Further, he can keep it close to his vest and avoid messy and inconvenient oversight by the media.
Not that the media would be a worry in his case. Remember how every US combat death was a Grim Milestone up to the 2008 election? Since then it appears that no US troops have been killed anywhere (well, save those unfortunate victims of workplace violence at Ft. Hood). Cindy Sheehan vanished in a puff of irrelevance, Code Pink stopped harassing recruiters, International ANSWER seems to have returned to arguing whether the Troskists or the kulaks are the greatest threat, and as for the Middle East, it… uh-oh.
Look! Binders!
Good points. The drone war is a cheap way to make O look tough on our enemies while he works on domestic transformation.
Yes,the destruction of American power is a feature not a bug.Obama came in saying we ate too much,used too much energy ,and had too much money and had too much military power.He fixed all that for us.
European butter.
Once again, let’s commend Romney for his patriotism in stepping into this mess. You can bet your ass the Clintons wouldn’t want to do it.