Tag Archives: Syria

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 →

GOP Debate: Bring Back The CNBC Moderators

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GOP Presidential contenders struggled with substantive questions during last week's debate. [Credit: ibtimes.com

GOP Pres­i­den­tial con­tenders fum­bled sub­stan­tive ques­tions dur­ing last week’s debate. [Cred­it: ibtimes.com]

Don­ald Trump wants a piece of the Key­stone Pipeline.

The issue didn’t come up dur­ing last week’s GOP debate, so Trump didn’t have the chance to elab­o­rate on his dec­la­ra­tion that he would have approved the project only if the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny forked over 25 per­cent of its profits.

“I want a piece of the deal,” Trump told Bret Baier of Fox News.  “When I say I want a piece, I’m now rep­re­sent­ing our coun­try the way I would rep­re­sent myself.” 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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →