Tag Archives: Iraq war

Winning By Not Winning In Iraq and Syria

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U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islamic State fighters, but the war may drag on for years. Why that's good for us. [Credit: Telegraph]

U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islam­ic State fight­ers, but the war may drag on for years. Why that’s good for us. [Cred­it: Telegraph]

The Pres­i­dent was asked a sim­ple ques­tion a few weeks ago: are we win­ning the war against the Islam­ic State?

He wouldn’t answer the ques­tion direct­ly, so I will.  We’re win­ning in Iraq and Syr­ia by not win­ning.  The net effect of our actions has so far been to keep extrem­ist Mus­lims of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties and sec­tar­i­an pas­sions engaged in war against … each oth­er.  And that may be the best pos­si­ble out­come in the cir­cum­stances. 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 →

President Bush Not To Blame For This Iraq Crisis

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Iraq appears on the verge of civil war and some blame former President George W. Bush. Here's why they're wrong. [Credit: al Jazeera America]

Iraq appears on the verge of civ­il war and some blame for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Here’s why they’re wrong. [Cred­it: al Jazeera America]

The Iraq civ­il war did not start under Oba­ma, it start­ed when Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons pulled the trig­ger to invade Iraq … . It was [the] sta­tus of force agree­ment, signed by Bush, that pledged to with­draw all US forces … Giv­en the stag­ger­ing cost of expense and lives we could not stay there “maybe a hun­dred years” as McCain said. Nor could we bleed hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars there every year. Oba­ma promised to get us out of there, and he right­ly did so … To attempt to blame any­one but Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons for the Iraq dis­as­ter is sim­ply revi­sion­ism at its finest. —  Excerpt­ed from a comment on my recent post on Iraq.

The Oba­ma presidency’s lead­ing malfea­sance lies in its belief that find­ing some­one to blame for a prob­lem is as good as solv­ing it.  So it is lit­tle sur­prise that my recent post on Iraq, in which I argued against US mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, would spur com­ments that for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush is to blame for the renewed fight­ing. 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 →

Why It’s a Bad Time to Hold on to Holder

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AG Eric Holder may have to help POTUS dig out from under mounting scandals. Credit: theatlantic.com

AG Eric Hold­er may have to go to help POTUS dig out from under mount­ing scan­dals.
Cred­it: theatlantic.com

May 10 was sup­posed to be about health care and moms.  The White House mes­sage of the day was that the health care law is pro-moth­er­hood. The law’s detrac­tors, with their “polit­i­cal bick­er­ing,” “tall tales,” and “polit­i­cal games,” are, by impli­ca­tion, against motherhood.

The Pres­i­dent deliv­ered this mes­sage two days before Moth­ers Day at a White House event. But his mes­sage nev­er did get out. Con­tin­ue read­ing →