A Middle East Policy in Shambles As President Obama launches another war, he knows no one is going to demagogue him the way Senator Obama did President Bush.
Almost every promise, almost every reset proclamation from Barack Obama about the struggles against, and those within, the radical Muslim world has either been withdrawn or proven bankrupt.
On the day the president announced his reelection bid, his administration renounced its loud promises to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a New York civilian court. While blaming Congress for the flipflop, Team Obama conceded that it had no public support for such a sensational courtroom drama — and knew that the trial of the mastermind of 9/11, a few blocks from the site of his mass murdering, might have endangered the president’s reelection.
Advertisement
Consider the rest of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, all of which Senator Obama demagogued and promised to overturn, or at least curtail, if he was elected president. Yet Obama has now embraced military tribunals, kept Guantanamo open (and will probably put new prisoners in it), left the Patriot Act largely untouched, vastly expanded the Predator targeted-assassination program, continued renditions, declared preventive detention and the suspension of habeas corpus legal and necessary in the case of terrorists, surged in Afghanistan, and kept to the Bush-Petraeus-Maliki agreements on scheduled troop withdrawals from Iraq. President Obama assumes two facts: Such policies are critical in keeping us safe; and they can be embraced without worry over demagogic attacks by the likes of Senator Obama.
Candidate Obama’s campaign opposition to all of the above, except the war in Afghanistan, weakened American credibility at a critical juncture in the war in Iraq, and helped propel him to victory over Hillary Clinton as a more passionate and leftward critic of George Bush. That he has now simply copied Bush’s anti-terrorism agenda, gussied it up with some ridiculous euphemisms, and banned descriptive terms like “war on terror” and “radical Islam” exposes him as hypocritical, naïve, and weak. Hypocritical: If these measures were bad in 2008, why are they good in 2011? Naïve: Did Obama really believe that campaign rhetoric was synonymous with the responsibility of governance? Weak: Why boast about ending Bush’s protocols only to give up on repealing them at the first sign of political pushback?
For most of 2009–2011 the two countries receiving most of Obama’s rhetorical distaste were democratic Israel and democratic Iraq — the region’s only constitutional states. The former is often portrayed as a rogue aggressor at the heart of all unrest among hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Middle East, the latter, a mistake not worth the cost of its founding in American blood and treasure. Yet despite all the Obama administration’s outreach to the region’s autocracies, only Israel and Iraq have largely avoided mass demonstrations calling for transparent and representative government. Arabs are killing each other from Syria to Libya, from Bahrain to Tunisia, without much worry over the ethnic makeup of the Jerusalem suburbs.
Almost immediately upon taking office, Barack Obama made two controversial moves in reaching out to Iran and Syria. He gave serial deadlines to Iran to cease its effort to acquire nuclear weapons (stop it by the U.N. summit in New York, stop it by the G-20 summit, stop it by the preliminary meetings of envoys). All were ignored. Obama turned his back on a million protesters in the streets of Tehran, with bizarre promises not to “meddle,” coupled with vague apologies about American behavior more than a half-century ago. A golden opportunity to help topple a vicious anti-American theocracy was turned into a buffoonish effort to appear multiculturally sensitive.
"If Qaddafi survives, do we say we’re sorry, pay reparations, take in rebel refugees, patrol a protected enclave for years, bisect the country, or play golf and let the Europeans deal with the mess?"
If the administration's track record is any indication, the answer is "yes".
I honestly believe that conservatives would be all for this (my guess is mccain would have done more, and still have combat forces in Iraq) so any economic argument kind of hours out the window. He got approval for the UN resolution, and if Qadafi had killed a few thousand people you would have killed him for it. Simply because the actions seem similar does not mean the rationale is the same. I could argue that just because he hasn't accelerated the withdrawal... He could think we are in this incredibly complicated mess and to simply withdraw would be irresponsible. I feel that, iraq being the most recent evidence, large scale social engineering in the middle east has very small, though not necessarily non existent. I don't understand how you think we can't do it here but can in an incredibly volatile region.
jcafr,
We still have combat troops in Iraq, the plan Obama is following in drawing down troop levels is Bush's, getting UN approval is great but how about getting Congressional approval, he over-stepped what authority the UN gave him (by calling for regime change and attacking ground targets), he continues policies that he denounced when he was a Senator, and has not articulated (wasn't he supposed to be the most articulate man in the room?) a clear vision on why we are killing people in Libya.
I have no idea what you mean by this
"I feel that, iraq being the most recent evidence, large scale social engineering in the middle east has very small, though not necessarily non existent. I don't understand how you think we can't do it here but can in an incredibly volatile region."
"There isn't a more profitable undertaking for any country than to declare war on the United States and to be defeated."
Prime Minister Rupert Mountjoy
The Mouse that Roared
Your strawmen aside, VDH point is that the President's own policies mirror very closely that of Bush43 -and these policies he campaigned vigorously against. Who cares what McCain may or may not have done if he was President. You liberals have a tendency to keep your focus on the past, and not the present.
The Lybian fiasco was a huge unassisted error on the President's part. Again, who cares what conservatives may or may not have done if occupying the WH. We are focused on the present. President Obama obviously gave the matter little thought, and ultimately gave in to the Clinton-Powers duo over the protests of the Sec of Defence. There really isn't any Obama Doctrine, and I suppose there never will be. Form my vantage point, the President would much rather focus on things like Bullying, health care waivers, and dispensing cash to political allies. And when pushed, his fall back position is to co-opt the Bush Doctrine. North Africa and the Middle East are changing before our eyes, and th President is no-where to be found.
Very fine article--I agree. Only one minor quibble. If Obama has declared it's legal to suspend habeas for terrorists, he's not stating the law. The Court held in Boumediene that alien unlawful combatants the U.S. was holding abroad in any place under its jurisdiction--even if that were only de facto--could file a habeas petition. As to Guantanamo, that meant that even though it is Cuban territory, because the U.S. exercises de facto sovereignty over it, the jihadists detained there have a right to habeas. The Court has allowed the Combatant Status Review hearings--held at Guantanamo--to serve as the functional equivalent of actual filing of habeas petitions in a U.S. court.
The sorry fact is that all this probably makes no difference, as long as Obama avoids the kind of public criticism Bush received (from Obama, among others), and as long as the American people want out of all these wars. Indeed, all Obama really needs to do to guarantee re-election is to announce that (with a heavy heart) our policies in Afghanistan aren't working out as well as he would have liked, so he will accelerate our withdrawal. Don't think for a moment that he isn't considering this.
Jimmy Carter must be relieved to know that when, in due course, he goes to his grave, he will have escaped the ignominy of being the worst president in the history of the United States.
Another clear-headed and succinct analysis from Professor Hanson. At this point even the most committed Obamaphile must admit that foreign policy both confuses and bores this administration. Diplomacy is a relentlessly realistic pursuit and this quality has been noticeably lacking in the Obama administration. We can only suppose that this is because Mr. Obama rejects the idea of "American national interest", a concept he finds vulgar. Mr. Obama also seems to believe that soaring (and increasingly monotonous) rhetoric is a substitute for such an interest. Events are continually proving him wrong.
"...the United States now suffers the worst of both worlds: looking weak and opportunistic in withdrawing support from former American allies, while not receiving much credit from the protesters because of the absence of early principled support."
Well said Mr Hanson. My question is why isn't someone in Congress willing to state the same facts so that it can be on public display on a grander scale? This administration is totally clueless when it comes to foreign policy. They are only making the situation in the Middle East worse. Doing nothing at all would be a more prudent position for this group of clowns in the executive branch. The real irony is that the annoited one has the audacity (his word) to seek re-election. "What fools these mortals be"! William Shakespeare
Why is Mr. Hanson denouncing Obambi for copying Bush's policies?
To the extent that he has, this is a Good Thing.
Would you want him to implement all the leftie-bait stuff he spouted in the campaign?
It was observable that a lot of what he said in the campaign was coldly cynical, meant purely to deceive those who wanted to be deceived, and that he never had the slightest intention of implementing it if it would make him look bad.
You could see that at the time, if you weren't blinded by Obamamania.
And still other things (closing Guantanamo) were equally obviously things he probably intended to do, but didn't attach any real importance to and was prepared to abandon at the first hint of seriously negative political consequences.
A weak, disjointed, meandering column as pointless as the "policy" it describes.
Yes Obama will go play golf.
Yes the left is transparently partisan in everything it says or does about foreign policy, or domestic policy, or what to wear or to eat. They are transparently partisan hypocrites about light bulbs and toilets. Who cares? Why does the left matter, when it is transparently bankrupt?
What actual policy for the United States do you have to offer instead?
Crickets chirp. In a disjointed and meandering manner, that never quite gets to any point...
Being the father of a soldier whose assignment to Afghanistan grows ever more imminent, I am nonplussed by the sudden silence of the code pinkers and Obama's militantly peace-loving supporters of 2008.
Professor Hanson's essay limns sickeningly Obama's seemingly inexplicable incoherence and incompetence with our wars and foreign policy. The effort to explain his behavior brings on a nauseating deja vu.
As an old Vietnam veteran I remember painfully how JFK drifted into Vietnam to immunize himself against Republican charges of military softness that he anticipated facing in his 1964 reelection bid. He knew that trick well, having been elected in part by traducing Republicans for the "missle gap."
Obama will play at war as much as necessary to calm the public's residual pro-war sentiment. And no one can say for sure that there won't be another big mohammedan attack between now and November 2012.
Therefore, a sorta-kinda militaristic posture politically is the only way to go. He doesn't need to worry about his erstwhile zealously anti-war partisans--they're full of KooAide.
Checkmate: Both bases covered for 2012. That's Obama's foreign policy in a nutshell: Cynical and immoral. Or nicely triangulated, as Clinton would say.
Obama's reelection isn't worth a drop of my son's blood, or anyone's.
If Barry had some experience in and was actually focused on our foreign policy to might have actually seen some sort of coherent approach to the unrest in the Middle East. But Barry's agenda calls for domestic policy to be first on his list and by his attitude and action I think he doesn't really care about geopolitics except for how people in other countries love him. The hypocrisy coming from the left is astounding; where is Cindy Sheehan? Where is Code Pink? Where are the hundreds of articles of sputtering outrage of Barry starting yet another war in the Middle East against an oil producing Muslim country?
