Tag Archives: Assad

Does Putin Back Hillary?

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Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and Demo­c­rat stan­dard-bear­er Hillary Clin­ton in hap­pi­er times. [Cred­it: thepoliticalcarnival.net]

Per­haps because I’m in Italy, I’ve not been infect­ed by the con­ta­gion that has spread more rapid­ly than the Zika virus: the febrile notion that Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin is sub­vert­ing our elec­toral process in an effort to elect Don­ald J. Trump as president.

Nev­er has such con­spir­a­to­r­i­al spec­u­la­tion mutat­ed so quick­ly into received wis­dom. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Cruz Missiles

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Ted Cruz, like every other presidential hopeful, vows to destroy the Islamic State. Should we believe him? [Credit: ABC News]

Ted Cruz, like every oth­er pres­i­den­tial hope­ful, vows to destroy the Islam­ic State. Should we believe him? [Cred­it: ABC News]

Ted Cruz says we don’t have a dog in the Syr­i­an civ­il war.  He nev­er­the­less wants to car­pet bomb the civ­il war’s lead­ing bel­liger­ent, the Islam­ic State (IS).  Which just might kill some dogs. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

History Won’t Win The War Against Terrorists

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President Obama sounded presidential Sunday night in his Oval Office address. [Credit: CNN]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma sound­ed pres­i­den­tial Sun­day night in his Oval Office address.   [Cred­it: CNN]

“We have a pat­tern now of mass shoot­ings in this coun­try that has no par­al­lel any­where else in the world.  And there are some steps we could take … to improve the odds that they don’t hap­pen as fre­quent­ly: com­mon-sense gun safe­ty laws, stronger back­ground checks.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Decem­ber 2, hours after the San Bernardi­no shootings

“It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of rad­i­cal­iza­tion, embrac­ing a per­vert­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam that calls for war against Amer­i­ca and the West. They had stock­piled assault weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of ter­ror­ism.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Decem­ber 6, on the San Bernardi­no shootings.

Some­times the coun­try needs a Pres­i­dent, not a par­ti­san. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

There Is No Plan To Destroy The Islamic State

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Hillary Clinton presented her plan for defeating the Islamic State recently. It won't work. Nor will those advanced by her Republican opponents. [Credit: NY Daily News]

Hillary Clin­ton pre­sent­ed her plan for defeat­ing the Islam­ic State recent­ly. It won’t work. Nor will those advanced by her Repub­li­can oppo­nents. [Cred­it: NY Dai­ly News]

When pressed by a nor­mal­ly docile gag­gle of White House reporters recent­ly over whether he would con­sid­er chang­ing his failed Syr­ia strat­e­gy, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma revert­ed to form: he accused Repub­li­cans of reli­gious big­otry and cru­el­ty to children.

His polit­i­cal oppo­nents, he said, believe that “only Chris­tians, proven Chris­tians, should be admit­ted” as refugees and that we “shouldn’t admit 3‑year old-orphans.”

The President’s efforts to divert atten­tion from his for­eign pol­i­cy deba­cles (which helped make orphans and refugees of three-year-olds) have so far fall­en flat.  The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans has lost con­fi­dence in his cam­paign against the Islam­ic State.  A Wash­ing­ton Post poll found that 57 per­cent dis­ap­prove of the way he’s deal­ing with the ter­ror­ist group – includ­ing 46 per­cent who strong­ly dis­ap­prove – against only 35 per­cent who sup­port him.

That pub­lic sen­ti­ment, of lit­tle inter­est to the Pres­i­dent, is a lead­ing con­cern for those vying to suc­ceed him.  Even Bernie Sanders claims to have a plan to destroy the Islam­ic State. Though they dif­fer in cer­tain respects, most of these plans call for drop­ping more bombs against more tar­gets from planes fly­ing the flags of more coun­tries (with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Rus­sia), pro­vid­ing more arms to fac­tions we don’t real­ly know and can’t real­ly trust, and deploy­ing more mil­i­tary “advis­ers” (not to be con­fused with “boots on the ground”) to the region.

All of them sug­gest that Islam­ic State can be van­quished with rel­a­tive ease and at lit­tle cost.  All of them are blow­ing smoke. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Is President Obama Right About Putin?

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Vladimir Putin delights in outwitting President Obama at every turn. But is the President right when he says the Putin's Syria adventure is "not a smart strategic move?" [Credit: Daily Mail and Getty Images]

Vladimir Putin delights in out­wit­ting Pres­i­dent Oba­ma at every turn. But is the Pres­i­dent right when he says that Putin’s Syr­ia adven­ture is “not a smart, strate­gic move?” [Cred­it: Dai­ly Mail and Get­ty Images]

The U.S. and Rus­sia blun­dered to the brink of nuclear war in 1983 accord­ing to recent­ly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, a reminder that as frayed as rela­tions between Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin have become, things could be far worse.

The NATO exer­cise that threat­ened mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion began with a fic­tion­al sce­nario that today does­n’t seem all that fic­tion­al — Rus­sia deliv­ers arms to Syr­ia and Iran.

Lead­ers of sev­er­al Gulf States, threat­ened by Russ­ian inter­ven­tion, seek U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment, accord­ing to the sce­nario.  The Pres­i­dent responds by dis­patch­ing mil­i­tary advis­ers to the region and increas­ing our naval pres­ence there.

As the NATO war game played out, ris­ing ten­sions even­tu­al­ly pro­voke Russ­ian mil­i­tary aggres­sion against its neigh­bors.  The U.S. Pres­i­dent, in response to a request from his mil­i­tary com­man­ders, autho­rizes the “lim­it­ed use of nuclear weapons against pre-select­ed fixed targets.”

Russ­ian mil­i­tary lead­ers who observed the NATO exer­cise con­clud­ed that the U.S. was plot­ting a real nuclear strike against the Sovi­et Union.  Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cials had no idea at the time how bad­ly the Sovi­ets were mis­read­ing our inten­tions or how close the world was draw­ing toward nuclear con­fla­gra­tion.  War was avert­ed.  But just bare­ly, if the new­ly declas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ments are to be believed.

Today, Rus­sia is doing far more than mere­ly sup­ply­ing arms to Syr­ia and Iran, leav­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma frus­trat­ed and flum­moxed, but not fum­bling for the nuclear launch codes.  Instead, the Pres­i­dent watch­es help­less­ly as Vladimir Putin asserts him­self in a region where the U.S. once held sway, vague­ly warn­ing that Russ­ian inter­ven­tion is “not a smart, strate­gic move.”

He may be right. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

President’s Iraq Strategy Avoids Doing Nothing … But How Will It End?

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A Libyan rebel for whom we provided air support celebrates in 2011. Today those same rebels have reduced the country to bloody chaos. Will our bombing in Iraq and Syria produce a better result? [Credit: The Guardian]

A Libyan rebel for whom we pro­vid­ed air sup­port cel­e­brates in 2011. Today those same rebels have reduced the coun­try to bloody chaos. Will our bomb­ing in Iraq and Syr­ia pro­duce a bet­ter result? [Cred­it: The Guardian]

The black flag of jihad flies over much of the coun­try.  City after city has fall­en to islamist insur­gents.  Mil­i­tants burn hous­es and attack eth­nic minori­ties and jour­nal­ists.   The pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment, pow­er­less to stop the onslaught, appeals for out­side help.  Fear­ing that the coun­try is fast becom­ing a “ter­ror­ist hub,” a West­ern gov­ern­ment this week sought to “mobi­lize the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” to launch a war against the jihadists.

Iraq?  No.  Libya, a coun­try where we con­duct­ed airstrikes in 2011 in sup­port of an odd assort­ment of ground forces that includ­ed more than its share of mis­fits and fanatics.

If that strat­e­gy pro­duced such a mis­er­able result in Libya, can we rea­son­ably expect it to work in Iraq and Syr­ia? Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Iraq: In Search Of An Organizing Principle

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The President has decided to fight jihadists threatening to kill Yazidis with bombs instead of hashtags. But it's not clear why. [Credit: Business Insider]

Sun­ni rad­i­cals are threat­en­ing to mas­sacre an obscure eth­nore­li­gious group known as Yazidis.  The Pres­i­dent has decid­ed to fight the jihadists with bombs instead of hash­tags. But it’s not clear why. [Cred­it: Busi­ness Insider]

“Great nations need orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples, and ‘Don’t do stu­pid stuff’ is not an orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple.” For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton.

Anoth­er August.  Anoth­er flir­ta­tion with war.  In the psy­chodra­ma that is the Oba­ma Pres­i­den­cy, our hero vac­il­lates between war and peace, detach­ment and inter­ven­tion, rid­ing out the storm and steer­ing into its teeth.  The rest of us are left to guess whether he will respond to the next human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis with bombs or hash­tags.  There is, as Mrs. Clin­ton notes, no “orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple” to lend coher­ence to our for­eign pol­i­cy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Can President Obama See The World As It Is?

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President Obama this week urged graduating West Point cadets to "see the world as it is." But does he see it all that clearly? [Credit: NY Daily News]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma this week urged grad­u­at­ing West Point cadets to “see the world as it is.” But how clear­ly does he see it? [Cred­it: NY Dai­ly News]

Pres­i­dent Obama’s mas­tery of the obvi­ous was on dis­play this week dur­ing his lengthy address at West Point.

“Iso­la­tion­ism,” he declared, “is not an option.” There’s a bold state­ment.  But that’s “not to say that every prob­lem has a mil­i­tary solu­tion.”  Has any­one ever said that?  “War rarely con­forms to slo­gans.”  Rarely?  “U.S. mil­i­tary action can­not be the only — or even pri­ma­ry — com­po­nent of our lead­er­ship in every instance.”  Has that ever been sug­gest­ed?  “Amer­i­ca should nev­er ask per­mis­sion to pro­tect our peo­ple, our home­land, or our way of life.” That’s a relief.  “The most direct threat to Amer­i­ca at home and abroad remains ter­ror­ism.”  Real­ly.  But “a strat­e­gy that involves invad­ing every coun­try that har­bors ter­ror­ist net­works is naïve and unsus­tain­able.” That would require an awful lot of inva­sions.  “We must uphold stan­dards that reflect our val­ues.”  Uphold­ing stan­dards that don’t reflect our val­ues would seem wrong.  “We should not expect change to hap­pen overnight.”

Change, nev­er­the­less, is occur­ring – but not the sort of change the Pres­i­dent has been advo­cat­ing. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Price of Raising False Hopes

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US Secretary of State John Kerry shares a moment with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif, after concluding an agreement for relaxed sanctions and renewed talks. [Credit: BBC]

US Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry shares a moment with his Iran­ian coun­ter­part, Mohammed Javad Zarif, after con­clud­ing an agree­ment for relaxed sanc­tions and renewed talks. [Cred­it: BBC]

Iran, World Pow­ers Reach His­toric Nuclear Deal. – Wash­ing­ton Post 

“What was agreed last night in Gene­va is not a his­toric agree­ment, it is a his­toric mis­take.” — Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu

The irre­sistible ten­den­cy of gov­ern­ment to over­sell its achieve­ments was on dis­play in this past weekend’s announce­ments of an agree­ment between Iran and the so-called G5+1 – the five per­ma­nent mem­bers of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Germany.

News out­lets the world over her­ald­ed the Iran nuclear deal as “his­toric.”  Its crit­ics called it his­toric fol­ly.  Review­ing the agree­ment, it appears that both sides are exag­ger­at­ing. It nei­ther sets back Iran’s capac­i­ty to devel­op nuclear weapons nor facil­i­tates their devel­op­ment. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Syria and the Future of US Policy

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credit abc

The August 21 chem­i­cal attack in Syr­ia has iron­i­cal­ly left Assad more secure­ly in pow­er than before, while increas­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in the region. [Cred­it: ABC]

The Syr­ia episode is behind us, but after the President’s ser­i­al impro­vi­sa­tions, our pol­i­cy, aims and inter­ests remain unclear.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →