No real need for a link avalanche when all those articles you linked seem to be based on the one Lancet story.
Believe me, I know.
Meanwhile Obama keeps driving the clown car around in circles honking the horn in disapproval.
He really isnt respected by our allies. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski was taped as saying the Polish-American alliance as ‘worthless’ and ‘harmful’ because it gives Poland a false sense of security. He also called it ‘bullshit’. Saudi intelligence chief al-Faisel in 2013 called American policy toward Syria ‘…funny, if it were not so blatantly perfidious, and designed to not only to give Mr Obama an opportunity to back down, but also help Assad to butcher his people.’ [Foreign Policy 9/10/2015]
Obamas foreign policy legacy is looking to be dire. Failure and uncertainty all over Eastern Europe and the Middle East. TBF he has done better in eastern Asia.
I don’t see the failures, but then I think I count success and failure to a large degree in expenditure of American lives.
Sorry Andy I dont mean this to be as snarky as it sounds but how many lives have been lost in the aftermath of the Arab spring? In Crimea? In eastern Ukraine? These deaths and the instability that resulted could have been prevented by mantaining the status quo. Obama didnt study nor learn from Jimmy Carters foreign policy.
But you are right that Obama has kept american lives out of danger. But at what cost?
I don’t think there’s anything we could have done that would be more likely to save these lives that were lost than to cause more deaths. That’s what I’ve learned from the last 12 years – that’s it’s impossible to predict the effects on the ground and on the population of engaging militarily into the middle east. Anything we could have done would be just as likely to cause more chaos and death as to save lives. Intervening in Libya may have saved lives in the short term, but may have caused more chaos and death in the long term (but there’s no real way to know).
With this in mind, the most important thing is to stay the fuck out. And Obama hasn’t stayed out as much as I’d like, but at least he hasn’t gotten Americans killed by the score. So it’s entirely possible that there have been “failures”, but I see such failures as trivial compared to putting in troops and getting them killed. In essence, any further engagement on the ground is failure, and any withdrawal and lack of engagement is success.
And HOW was he going to do that without a major commitment of resources and probably American lives that, frankly, this country is in no mood to commit?
And please leave the empty “lead from the front” platitudes at home.
That’s because you don’t realize that whenever something bad happens in the world, it’s because the US didn’t prevent it!!!
AKA troublesome client states whining when we refuse to put their interests ahead of our own.
In the words of Bill Clinton: who’s the fucking superpower here?
I don’t think it is just “client states”, hinting that our allies are our lapdogs. I think this is incorrect, but that is another topic. Yes many nations don’t really respect President Obama, for better or worse. From our allies who are dictatorships to democracies. Arab states, European nations, Israel and others.
Guess who also does not respect president Obama, well Russia’s president. He knows there won’t be consequences to what he is doing in Ukraine and Syria.
I am not advocating we should be gung ho for war and that Obama is a wimp, let me make that clear.
As for Syria, all this talk about moderate rebels, and what not is beside the point. Our president(for us Americans) never was serious about getting rid of Assad or helping others get rid of him. He admitted it himself last week that the failure of our training program was because it was flawed in the first place. That rebels would be our lapdogs and go out and risk their lives just for America’s goals, which is to bomb ISIS, NOT Assad. I don’t how many times I have to say this till people register it in their heads.
Of course the rebels were not going to fight and die for Obama, they want to fight Assad! Would you fight and die for a foreign power, one who has stabbed you in the back and refuses to promise assistance and protection?!
This does NOT make rebels bad guys, it makes them smart. Hell I see Obama has never once even hit Assad targets, has allowed red lines to cross and refuses to provide air cover. I congratulate the rebels for giving the middle finger to Obama and our country.
Plus another reason why it failed is because we were so slow and trying to weed out extremists" so as to not train them. And I will be fair, we have screwed up before and really we don’t control anything in Syria and don’t who to really support. So I am not bashing Obama.
So allies and adversaries both do not respect us. You don’t need to be pro-war to admit this.
Someone mentioned Jimmy Carter, but there is a difference. Carter took a chance and tried to rescue our hostages, the result notwithstanding. Obama never really tried, and most was lip service in regards to Assad “having to leave office”. Trying and failing is different than never really trying.
Ideally this sounds great, but the real world does not always work that way. There will be times when we may be needed to intervene and whatnot.
By staying the fuck out…
Maybe you, and most Americans don’t realise how many are caused by the US.
No American President has ever managed to have a great foreign policy record in the Middle East. It’s not a region where there are foreign policy triumphs to be had. The best Presidents can hope for in the Middle East is to be able to muddle through and avoid any catastrophes.
I haven’t seen any such times lately.
That’s a lot of naughty water, got to say. That will be your cold war victory rupturing Russian society, which is strange because I thought what you had to offer was a better way of life for them. turns out all you had to offer was impoverishment and a higher death rate.
Anyway, the end game is ISIS taking Saudi Arabia. Whoever ISIS backers in Saudi Arabia are seem to want this.
You’d have to go somewhere for oil then. But in that eventuality you could always test their commitment of their hate for you by offering to buy it.
If they say no, then they probably mean it, and your economy will collapse.
Given that possibility I’m amazed how casual the US is about ISIS, and about it’s allies supporting all those other groups that a fighting to establish a caliphate.
I guess the gamble is on a containment of ISIS and somehow managing to conquer - ahem, I mean “regime change” Syria. Let’s not fuck about pretending it’s about democracy in Syria. It’s the oil.
But you may ask, if ISIS, Al Nusra and all those others want to regain Saudi for their caliphate, which would be very bad for us, why are our allies especially Turkey supporting them ?
I guess they’re trying a tightrope act between too much support and too little. Enough to remove Assad, and not too much to ruin Saudi Arabia.
Look, if you want to say that Turkey supported ISIL in the past, we’ve argued that to a stalemate. Whatever.
But to say in your last post that Turkey is “supporting” ISIL needs to be corrected. In fact, Turkey is currently bombing ISIL, and allowing U.S. warplanes to use Turkish airbases. Can we try to be at least a little bit precise with our arguments here?
ETA: And are you really blaming the United States for alcoholism in Russia (#315)? WTF?
You’re right, of course. Forget Syria and all these proxy conflicts in nations no-one gives a damn about. What Obama should do is nuke Moscow. That’d show 'em.
It’s a double game it seems. Turkey and the US are sort of bombing, but on the other hand there is so much evidence that Turkey is simultaneously supplying, turning a blind eye etc that you would have to work hard to ignore it.
Turkey just threatened to shoot down any Russian planes that stray into it’s airspace, would that be because the Russians are doing it like they mean it ?
But hey, if you have a list of permissible journalists that you adhere to for whatever reason then you’re not going to hear about it. Waste of an internet if you ask me.
More journalistic scum : Fisk : Do not watch : Unwelcome information.
“There seems to be an awful lot of evidence that Turkey is in some way talking directly if not actually helping ISIS”
What - a state conducting relations with ISIS ?