Tag Archives: Libya

Trump and Friends

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Donald Trump's recent foreign policy speech reflects our love/hate relationship with our allies. Credit: businessinsider.com

Don­ald Trump’s recent for­eign pol­i­cy speech reflects our love/hate rela­tion­ship with our allies. Cred­it: businessinsider.com

“Who the f*** does he think he is?Who’s the f***ing super­pow­er here?”  — Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton after meet­ing with Israeli PM Netanyahu in 1996

Don­ald Trump, the GOP’s pre­sump­tive stan­dard-bear­er, shares for­mer Pres­i­dent Clinton’s frus­tra­tion with America’s allies.  And like Clin­ton, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and oth­ers who have occu­pied the Oval Office, Trump isn’t sure what to do about it. 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 →

Hope And (Regime) Change

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Our drive-by intervention accomplished regime change in Libya, but the country has still not recovered from its liberation. [Credit: National Post]

Our dri­ve-by inter­ven­tion accom­plished regime change in Libya, but the coun­try has still not recov­ered from its lib­er­a­tion. [Cred­it: Nation­al Post]

The Con­sti­tu­tion requires Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to leave office in 700 days.  If he has his way, Vladimir Putin and Ben­jamin Netanyahu will pre­cede him into pri­vate life.

It should not be sur­pris­ing that a Pres­i­dent who prides him­self on refus­ing to nego­ti­ate with elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives has so lit­tle patience with some of his fel­low nation­al lead­ers.  Or that regime change has become a lead­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Pres­i­den­t’s for­eign pol­i­cy.   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 →

Benghazi, the IRS and the Perils of Power

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Pho­to cred­it: Huff­in­g­ton Post

What is it that makes sec­ond terms so polit­i­cal­ly treach­er­ous? Received wis­dom tells us that scan­dal is root­ed in hubris – a new­ly re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent, hav­ing stared down the threat of polit­i­cal extinc­tion, now thinks him­self invul­ner­a­ble, and soon enough is caught up in scandal.

But I think some­thing more fun­da­men­tal is at work. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

While the President Slept — New Report Questions President’s Handling of Benghazi Attack

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obama-may-1-2011

Pres­i­dent tuned into bin Laden killing, tuned out of Beng­hazi attack.

Five House Com­mit­tee Chair­men last week released an “Inter­im Progress Report”  on their joint inves­ti­ga­tion into last September’s ter­ror­ist attack on a US diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Beng­hazi, Libya. The report, giv­en lit­tle atten­tion by most major media out­lets, was imme­di­ate­ly denounced by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Mem­bers of those 5 com­mit­tees as a “par­ti­san staff report” that vio­lat­ed “reg­u­lar order.”

They’re right both about the report’s par­ti­san tenor and its depar­ture from reg­u­lar order. The pro­ce­dure for fil­ing com­mit­tee reports is almost as old as Con­gress itself. That process is well-defined and includes, where appro­pri­ate, a sec­tion for the minor­i­ty to state its views. There is noth­ing of the sort in this “inter­im report.” It reads more like an indict­ment than a judg­ment. It presents only one side of the story.

That one side of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, includes a chronol­o­gy that is care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed and well-sourced. Con­tin­ue read­ing →