Thanks to the utter fecklessness of the administration, foreign policy may be a significant campaign issue next year.
[Update a while later]
Welcome to the Islamist Middle East:
First, to describe the Obama administration’s Middle East policy as a disaster — I cannot think of a bigger, deadlier mess created by any U.S. foreign policy in the last century — is an understatement.
Second, the dominant analysis used by the media, academia, and the talking heads on television has proven dangerously wrong. This includes the ideas that revolutionary Islamism doesn’t exist, cannot be talked about, is not a threat, and that extreme radicals are really moderates.
I won’t review all the evidence here, but it amounts to a retreat for moderates, allies of the West, and American interests coupled with an advance for revolutionary Islamists.
I blame George Bush. No, really. I supported removing Saddam Hussein because I thought that the administration had a strategy. I was apparently wrong.
And now Obama has simply compounded it.
[Update a while later]
This is worth repeating:
Without taking any position on climate issues, let me put it this way: Why are people frantic about the possibility that the earth’s temperature might rise slightly in 50 years but see no problem in hundreds of millions of people and vast amounts of wealth and resources becoming totally controlled by people who think like those who carried out the September 11 attacks?
Good question.
Let’s see – in Iraq we’re:
1) Following the Bush agreement to pull out
2) Accomplished the stated goals of getting rid of Saddam, removing the WMD, and establishing a democracy
3) and 57% of Americans think Iraq is going well.
In Libya we’ve gotten rid of a dictator that’s vexed America since Ronald Reagan, at very low cost to the US and zero American casualties. Oh, and by the way, Osama Bin Laden’s dead too.
Obama will have his challenges getting re-elected. They won’t be on the foreign policy front.
Indeed, Obama has many “teachable moments” for our enemies: emulate Syria, Iran, and Turkey. Obstinately continue to do bad things to Americans. Do not give in. Do not imitate Gaddafi, who stopped doing terrorism, backed off and went on his best behavior after Ronald Reagan killed various members of Gaddafi’s family. Still less should you emulate Egypt and be an American ally.
Sorry Chris, when it comes down to you or Barry Rubin, I believe Mr. Rubin.
By the way, didn’t you offer a number of criticisms of Bush regarding the non-existence of WMDs, and now you are using the removal of WMDs as a success criterion for Obama in the area of foreign policy?
Chris, you remember the comment about people crying for change? A bad change is still a change. The next government of Libya is not likely to see the West in a good light; nor is it likely to be an improvement for the Libyans.
It’s possible to be glad Qadhafi’s gone, but not feel good about what’s coming next.
… and 57% of Americans think Iraq is going well.
Why is this statistic good — an indication that Americans are well-informed wise and and their opinions should affect our nation’s policies — yet similar statistics about the number of Americans who believe in some form of creationism is bad — an indication that Americans are stupid and uneducated and their opinions should not affect public policies?
For the record, I’m not a creationist, nor do I believe that President Obama’s Iraq policy is wise.
Of course, all of Chris’s “accomplishments” would have been true if the US had pulled out of Iraq shortly after capturing Saddam Hussein. Yet, we are still there and no one (including Chris) can say what we are doing there.
The Bush Administration did have a strategy for capturing Iraq, but it had no strategy for what came next. “Nationbuilding” is a buzzword, not a strategy.
So, it’s come to this? Chris is now defending George W. Bush (for the first time in history) and comparing him to Barak Obama?
If that’s the new meme, it will be an interesting election season. The establishment Demopublicans versus the Tea Party reformers.
Only time will tell how the Arab Spring, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan will turn out.
We are doing better in Afghanistan than people know, because it gets so little coverage in the media. The surge worked well in the South but there were not enough troops provided to surge in the East. Now we are trying to transition the surge troops to the East before they are pulled out over the coming months.
Iraq seems to be going well and there is reason for optimism. The tricky part is how to maintain or increase our involvement and influence. Now is not the time to turn our backs on Iraq.
In Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries there is little reason to be optimistic but the future is so uncertain that no one can really predict how things will turn out.
One of the links pointed out the persecution the Copts are currently experiencing in Egypt but it should also be pointed out that the rebels in Libya are committing the same types of atrocities that our involvement was supposed to prevent.
… and it’s OK to use snipers against innocent pedestrians.
For me, the big problem isn’t the rise of radical Islamism. There’s not much that can be done to curb its rise in the Middle East, even if Obama were competent in such matters. I just consider it a more or less inevitable factor we’ll just have to deal with. Instead, it is the spread of nuclear weapons in the region. We can’t control what’s in peoples’ minds or who they choose to follow, but we do have modest degree of influence over what weapons they use.
Here, Obama has been acting irresponsibly. For example, we learned in the Wikileaks publishing of US embassy communications, that the US has privately urged various governments, such as Turkey, to be concerned with Iran’s nuclear weapons program, while maintaining public silence on the matter. This stance enabled Obama supporters to pretend for a time that the Iranian nuclear weapons program didn’t exist.
And there hasn’t been a serious push to defuse Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Someone got lucky with the Stuxnet worm and subsequent assassinations of key personnel in the program. But we’re going to need a more permanent way to stop this. Because if Iran gets nuclear weapons, then every country in the region is going to be far more likely to seek them out as well. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are likely to develop their own programs. Perhaps Turkey as well. And there’s a chance that Iran might share its technology with its allies, such as Syria, Sudan, and Venezuela.
Charles Krauthammer opined back in the Bush days that Bush and company were responsible for allowing Iran to go nuclear; that Bush had allowed the last reasonable opportunity to stop them to pass. It’s possible that Bush hoped that invading Iraq would be relatively quick and cheap and would send a message, unfortunately Iran decided to ignore the message and Bush didn’t have a back-up plan.