Bacevich is excellent. He definitely knows his stuff.
I don't always share his positions, because I bring a different ideological viewpoint, but his arguments are always, from what I've seen, very solidly grounded in a deep understanding of the situations he writes about.
For example, the Pentagon was very strongly against involvement in the Libya War. This was widely reported, with Secretary of Defense (and career Pentagon figure) Robert Gates making public statements against involvement all over the media. Obama overruled the military establishment when he decided in favor of supporting the international action.
These are not well-informed people. They are not reality-based. They're happy to merely check their guts and assume that the facts of every situation just gotta be what their pre-determined narrative predicts they would be.d
Attributing this problem to the Pentagon, instead of to the political leadership, is a glaring error that greatly impedes understanding of the issues he tries to write about.
I don't know why you keep linking to him as if he is some kind of insightful expert on military matters. He is to military affairs what the average internet libertarian is to tax policy: they don't know anything except that they're against some stuff, but they use enough big words to fool people who also don't know anything about the field into thinking they are well-informed.
Sez who, “we’re good at” counter-terrorism? Trillions of dollars to maybe kill a few hundred “terrorists?
We didn't spend trillions of dollars try maybe kill a few hundred terrorists. We spent trillions of dollars on the Iraq War and on the post-al Qaeda war in Afghanistan, neither of which was about killing terrorists.
Once upon a time, JT understood the difference between Saddam and bin Laden, between occupying Iraq and stopping terrorism, between invading a country and fighting a cadre of terrorists, between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.
Not anymore, though. Remember all of those old statements about the Iraq War having nothing to do with 9/11? That is "no longer operative."
Drone attacks, or any other sort of attacks, against an enemy that has attacked you are legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter. It would be difficult to imagine a more textbook example of legitimate self-defense than shooting at a foreign terrorist organization that has staged attacks on your country and is attempting to stage more.
And there is not even the slightest hint of evidence that torture has occurred under Obama. As we learned from Abu Ghraib and the torture memos, torture doesn't stay secret. It gets out. People talk, orders are given, and the truth comes out. It's been almost four years now since Obama issued the executive order banning torture, and no such evidence has emerged.
A silly analogy that only works if you accept as an undisputed proposition the notion that any American use of force, in any place, for any reason, is inherently evil.
Your description of Obama "simply" implementing the AUMF Bush negotiated. If the total withdrawal of all American troops and the abandonment of the bases (and, therefore, our ability to station forces there like in Kuwait) was such an automatic, easy thing, then why didn't anyone, left or right, say this in 2008? John McCain was quite determined to stay there for fifty why not a hundred years. People on the left were assuring me that there was no way Obama would ever withdraw the troops, because the MIC wouldn't let him and how could I be so naive?
Now, people on the left want to pretend that this development they were certain would never, ever happen was actually inevitable all along.
Well, no, it wasn't. It was a very open question what we would do. The troops would still be fighting in Iraq if John McCain or Mitt Romney had won in 2008, AUMF or no.
My big takeaway from Romney's comments about "drones are not enough, you need a plan for the Middle East" is that he does not approve of Obama's policy of limiting the conflict to one between the US and the members of a small death cult, and instead, wants to return the the Bush era, when the 9/11 attacks, and our response, were envisioned as a grand geopolitical conflict that will turn on "control" of states by American clients.
Like Bush, he's not interested in solving the real problem (al Qaeda), and wants to go back to playing around on the Risk board instead.
This does remind me of Iraq where forming a government often took many months, even after a successful (purple fingers) election.
You seem to be conflating three different things - the establishment of functional state services, the establishment of a functional system of democracy, and the establishment of a stable governing coalition within an parliamentary democracy.
In Iraq, the former was established relatively quickly, while the second took much longer (and is still ongoing). In Libya, it's just the opposite. They set up their democratic national government quite quickly, but the government is having trouble establishing its writ across the country. This is probably best explained by the absence of a foreign military in the aftermath of the dictatorship falling. It's hard to have a real democracy with the US Army patrolling your streets, but it's easy to establish government writ. Similarly, it's easier to set up a functional democracy when your country isn't under military occupation, but it's a lot harder to build a state that can enforce its writ.
As for the third, look at Italy. Some countries have frequent changes in leadership, and it's not the end of the world.
In the most relevant area, that of bilateral arms negotiations, Obama's record of working successfully with the Russians is rather impressive.
Was it "pandering to Russian leadership" to negotiate the New START agreement?
I wonder if you consider New START, like its predecessors under Reagan and Gorbachev, to demonstrats "a lack of resolve and leadership on his part." I certainly don't - I think it takes a great deal of leadership and resolve to restart nuclear arms reduction talks with the Russians after Dubya so dramatically trashed them (and the Nobel Committee agrees).
Everything that the critics are saying about Tesla and the Volt today, they were saying about the Prius ten years ago. They're only selling a few, they lose money on every sale - it's exactly the same script.
I have long considered the threat of Iranian nukes to be overhyped, because I have long considered that Iranian regime, while quite nasty, to be a basically rational actor.
But for them to endure this punishment instead of opening their facilities, or just buying the stuff from Russia instead of making it themselves, is quite irrational. It demonstrates a willingness to accept damages completely out of proportion from any real-world gains.
I was thinking about this 'foreign' concept, and Mitt Romney's life is a lot more foreign to me than Barack Obama's.
I know people whose father was black. I know people who lived in Hawaii for a few years. I know people who lived overseas for a time. I know people with African last names. Doesn't everybody?
On the other hand, I don't know a single person whose father was CEO of a car company. I don't know a single person who has a car elevator, or a dressage horse.
Is my experience all that unusual? Apparently not.
The most important way Obama has minimized casualties, Bill, has been his redefinition of our efforts from a "War on Terror," shrinking it down to a war against al Qaeda.
The drone program directed against Al-Qaeda, and associated militant and terrorist leaders and operatives, has been a brilliant tactical success. It has greatly degraded the leadership of these organizations, a leadership that is much harder to replace than ordinary foot soldiers.
Yes. Yes, it has. So...now what? We can't keep doing this forever.
That the leadership of these groups of Unlawful Enemy Combatants hides and operates among civilians does put those civilians at risk, and any resulting collateral damage lies upon the heads of that leadership.
Too far! Even if a perfectly-appropriate enemy is hiding among civilians, Geneva still requires that every effort be made to avoid civilian casualties. The drone program has (at least under this President) been carefully managed towards that end, but that is the requirement of international law.
MarkF's comment was "There are now 100,000 U.S. paid contractors operating in Iraq, along with 40,000 other NATO troops. Nothing is being said about the contractors”
Ah, I see MarkF has cited the error in a comment below.
Not much. He withdrew the troops from Iraq against the desires of the military brass, abandoning the bases from which they had planned to "project power throughout the region." Ditto the missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Ditto getting involved in Libya. Ditto refusing to use more force there once we did become involved. Ditto ending the F-22 program. Ditto including, and sticking to, the military cuts in the debt ceiling deal. Ditto announcing a timeline up front for the surge and drawdown in Afghanistan.
On all of these matters, and more, Obama crossed the military leadership, uniform and civilian, including in several instances his own Secretary of Defense and Direction of Central Intelligence. If you believe the line that his Afghan policy represented a cave, as opposed to his actual preference, then that decision stands out as an exception to the general pattern.
A slight correction, Travis: Obama does not cite, as Bush did, "executive authority" to conduct drone strikes or otherwise "have people killed," but bases his authority on the Force Authorization passed by Congress.
Also, the strikes against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqanni network have come at a great cost to our "Middle Eastern politics." They have greatly strained our relations with Pakistan and Yemen, and unquestionably harmed our standing among the public in the region. Indeed, that is the strongest argument against them - that our other foreign policy goals in the region should outweigh the security interest we have in destroying al Qaeda (or, at least, that they do at this point, with al Qaeda already so weakened).
Your comparison is ludicrous. The vast majority of those killed in Hiroshima - upwards of 90% were civilians.
Even the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that Professor Cole links to - a strongly anti-drone source, which puts out numbers for the purpose of arguing against their usages - postulates that civilian deaths represent 1/4-1/3 at the highest end.
Refusing to waste his presidency on the hopeless task of getting the contemporary Israeli leadership to make peace doesn't seem like a mistake to me. It seems like a pretty reasonable call.
It's tough to say that Obama made a mistake using sanctions against Iran to deflect the push for war, since he has successfully deflected that push, which was his goal. Your claims are that this "might" result in something. Well, let's hold off on calling it a mistake until there is something other than the successful accomplishment of the goal you identified - resisting the push for war - to point to.
I don't understand #4. Yes, Libya is having trouble getting its state up and running. How is that Obama's mistake? You don't spell out anything he did, or didn't do, that he should have handled otherwise.
Ditto with Syria. You're very vague about what he should have done instead - and for good reason! You don't know what the right move would have been, I don't know, Hillary Clinton doesn't know, and neither does anyone else.
What other "port in the Gulf" features a government better than Bahrain's? What other "port in the Gulf" would have welcomed an American naval base? I'm all ears.
And the decimation of al Qaeda through the drone program is perhaps the greatest success in American foreign policy in decades.
Was it not Romney who brought up the era "since World War Two," and claimed that we spent that era allying ourselves with democratic governments and promoting human rights?
Perhaps because there isn't the slightest chance of the United States invading Iran, and everyone in Washington knows it. There is a lot of bluffing going on.
It was not closed for environmental reasons, but could not compete with cheap fracked shale natural gas.
Kinda sorta.
One of the reasons coal can't compete is the expense of complying with environmental regulations, which have been strengthened a great deal by EPA Direction Lisa Jackson.
What was it Barack Obama said way back when? "So it will be legal to build a coal-fired power plant. You'll just go bankrupt." Something like that.
The doctrine that gross violation of human rights provides a legitimate exception to the usual doctrine of state sovereignty, and the doctrine that the United Nations can rightfully authorize force against a state for such violations, are two of the greatest achievements of international affairs progressives (think Eleanor Roosevelt) in the past century.
The sheer number and diversity of the people Moammar Khadaffy managed to piss of is truly striking.
The United States, the House of Saud, al Qaeda, Baathist Syria, France, the Egyptian military, the Libyan people, the French, the Arab Spring government in Tunisia...not even the Russians or Chinese would lift a finger to save him.
Truly, Moammar Khadaffy was a uniter, not a divider.
After all, if any military-aged male in Waziristan is potentially a militant then any military-aged male near an Air Force facility is potentially a drone pilot.
You are confused. The "military-aged males in the area" standard is NOT used for the purpose of targeting. The New York Times story you are referring to makes it very clear that much stricter standards are used to determine whether a target may be legitimately struck, and that the standard you refer to is used only assessing the damage after a strike occurs, when there are casualties beyond the individuals targeted.
And if it is acceptable for the US to kill civilians while pursuing US policy on foreign soil what is our basis for complaining when civilians are killed in the US by foreigners pursuing policy objectives?</i?
"Our basis" is the same as that in the Geneva Conventions - a recognition that the accidental killing of civilians in a war, and the deliberate targeting of them, are two very different things.
Ms. Shah's comment that we should replace force with "non-lethal approaches" to al Qaeda terrorists reminds me of nothing so much as Karl Rove's slander that liberals wanted to give the people behind 9/11 "therapy and compassion."
Why are there so many people who think it's their responsibility to embody the straw man stereotypes that the right invents for the purpose of discrediting liberalism?
The basic premise of this piece - that there is something novel or particularly dangerous about President Obama's involvement in target selection in this war - is utterly refuted by history. Presidents have been signing off on what targets to bomb, or what beaches to land on, throughout the history of the Republic. The only difference between Obama's actions and those of previous wartime Presidents is that the targeting is much more precise, and kills far fewer people, than when Presidents were signing off on nuking Hiroshima or bombarding air bases and oil refineries.
Obama can say these things with a straight face because the only lawless invasion and occupation of a Muslim country was the Iraq War, which he opposed from the beginning.
Opening a window on Mitt Romney's plane at 30,000 feet would, indeed, solve some of our problems.
Also, from the 60 Minutes interview:
Question: What are the essential qualities of a leader?
ROMNEY: Well, a leader has to have the capacity to build trust in the people he or she works with. People have to look at that person and say, ``I may disagree with them. But I know where they stand. And I can -- I can trust them.''
I wonder if he found it strange that everyone in the studio began avoiding eye contact with him and pretend coughing.
Why are you declaring that these particular Islamist militias, as opposed to the much larger number of people in other, competing militias who drove them out of Benghazi, were "the ones who saved the people of Benghazi form certain genocide?"
The right and the far left both make the same mistake: the look at the most violent, most anti-American faction in any country and, no matter how small and despised it is by the populace of that country, proclaim it to be the truest, most legitimate representative of the people.
It looks to me like the judges are standing up to secretiveness, not air strikes.
The American political system is based on having competing branches of government jealously guarding their rights and authority against other branches. These judges clearly do not like being told by the executive branch that they don't get to see the information they need in order to rule on the cases before them. Going from that observation, to the claim that they are tipping their hands on the air strikes themselves, is a bit of a reach.
That's funny - I thought the west supported the radical salafis' targets, like Mubarak.
To the American observer, it is alternately amusing and irritating the way all of the different factions in the Middle East accuse their opponents of secretly being CIA pawns.
You Salafis are just being used by the CIA! No, we're not! You liberals are the cat's paws! No, actually, you both are; we moderate Islamists are the only ones who aren't secret agents of Washington. And on and on and on...
I mean, they been doing it since those early successes in places like Italy and Souoth Korea and Notagainistan and Iran(oops).
...right up until they stopped doing so in 2011, and allowed Hosni Mubarak to be deposed.
There is absolutely no way the U.S. government would have ever allowed that to happen during the Cold War. Something dramatic changed in American foreign policy in 2011. It's time to come out of the Cold War mindset.
But still, I'm sure they're not shedding any tears over the possibility that the advisory could be interpreted that way - any more than Barack Obama thinks his statement about the Egyptian alliance was a gaffe.
Westerners and Western-educated folk who apologize for Muslims by invoking the depredations of the West are not helping make things better.
Westerners who apologize for Muslim fanatics by invoking the depredations of the West are not trying to make things better in Muslim societies.
Rather, such people are trying to use an orientalized image of Muslims (all of whom share the viewpoint of those 200 Moroccan marchers, doncha know) as a weapon in their own political conflicts with other factions in their own countries.
Great. In ten years, people in the Arab world are going to have a better understanding of Martin Luther King than people in the United States.
They're actually getting his real words. For the past thirty years, we've been fed the myth of Teddy Bear Martin Luther King, a kindly sort of fellow who travelled around the country giving patriotic speeches and telling black people not to be violent. Lemme tell you, conservatives LOVE Teddy Bear Martin Luther King!
You see, he had this philosophy which he called "Non-violent mumble mumble mumble... "
In the 1990s, during the breakup of Yugoslavia, the situation was frequently described in Colin Powell's phrase, "Those people have been killing each other for centuries." Of course, Serbs and Croats and Bosnians had been living peacefully in an integrated society for decades, and it was only after Milosevic engaged in shameless rabble-rousing for political purposes that the ethnic violence started, but it the overwhelming view in the United States was that culture, not politics, was to blame.
For you to write about overthrowing democratic leaders and propping up dictators, in the aftermath of American actions in Egypt and Libya during Arab Spring, just goes to show how devoted people can be to a narrative, facts be damned.
No one claimed that it was - although all of the deadly anti-American violence (that in Libya) has been done by al Qaeda.
The only conflation being made here is from Sherm, who claims that targeting al Qaeda commanders in air strikes is "sending violence..." ordinary Muslims' "way."
Good job, Joe, conflating the many dead bodies of “bugsplattery” with the relatively tiny number of what we used to call “terrorists” that happen to get killed by Hellfires.
Actually, even the most extreme estimates of civilian casualties from drone attacks claim only a small fraction of the casualties to be civilians. Professor Cole had a post featuring these numbers up just a few days ago - a post that you commented on, so I can only conclude that you are being deliberately dishonest when you make such a gross factual error.
When you stop checking your gut, and start making the slightest effort to comport your statements and beliefs with the available evidence, I might find myself more inclined to pay any attention whatsoever to your increasingly bizarre, consistently off-topic rants. As of now, when I see such a gross misstatement of fact as the very first statement out of your keyboard, I just stop reading.
Your statement to me appears intentionally ambiguous. Are you stating that the current violence against our diplomats and diplomatic missions is “just and necessary?”
No, I'm stating that merely noting that violence has occurred is not enough to draw a valid conclusion.
There are actually people on this thread - people who seem to consider themselves to be educated, morally-admirable people - who are bragging about their ability to believe that the crews raining down rocket fire on civilian neighborhoods in Misrata, and the people who ended that slaughter by using violence against that crew, are morally equivalent, and that their actions had similar consequences.
Not even the most outlandish estimates of casualties from drone strikes claim that there have been tens of thousands of casualties. The high end of the estimate of civilian casualties is aroun 1000, in over a decade.
In the meantime, al Qaeda killed over 2000 civilians in one day in 2001. The embassy bombings killed over 200 in one day. The Bali bombing, another 200.
But these days, al Qaeda isn't able to carry out those operations anymore. Do you care? You can't even be bothered to acknowledge the much higher number of civilian deaths attributable to al Qaeda, so I doubt the prevention of thousands of additional deaths even registers for you.
Actually, it did. For decades, between the Camp David Accords and, well, Thursday, this policy results in a robust alliance between the US and Egypt, including a security guarantee for Israel. From the point of view of foreign policy, it was an enormous success.
The parts of US foreign policy towards Egypt that need to change in light of the new political reality and the possibilities it created - and there are several - do not include these basic tools of statecraft.
The US has not managed the relationship with Pakistan well
The US has bigger fish to fry in Pakistan.
The Pakistani government didn't like the bin Laden raid, for instance. Too bad.
I'd prefer to have an excellent relations with Pakistan AND successfully demolish al Qaeda, but if those two goals come into conflict, the latter clearly has to take precedence over the former.
I don't recall the phrase "movie critic in chief" appearing the U.S. Constitution.
I want to know why he won't condemn the MVP: Most Valuable Primate movies. You want to talk about a piece of trash! It's about a monkey playing basketball! And they made a sequel!
Silence equals death, Mr. President! Do the right thing.
The Libyan in Juan's picture tells us that the thugs and killers who murdered Christopher Stevens don't represent her society.
The western leftists in his comment threads assure us that they do.
I'm gong to go with the opinion of the nice young lady in the head scarf.
Libyans fought and died to protect Chris Stevens and the rest of the embassy staff, just like they fought and died to overthrow Gadhaffi. The actual Libyan people don't seem too terribly interested in the fake anti-imperialism one finds all to frequently on political blogs.
These mob actions were tiny compared to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, or the uprisings in Libya and Syria, or the rallies there were commonly staged in Iraq during the occupation.
It just isn't true that this is growing. If anything, the opposite is happening.
The basic question is Why Muslim r so sensitive and why the behave in a barbaric manner when ever they think that their feelings are hurt.
Muslims, as a whole, are not. This was not the spontaneous reaction of ordinary Muslims to the movie. This was the act of a small number of political extremists who used the movie as an excuse.
the pathetic condition in which they are living without any freedom of expression doesn’t cause any unrest?
I wonder, did you miss 2011? What do you think the uprisings across the Arab world - in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, elsewhere - were about? Cartoons?
OK, let's say that a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians is, as Schmit writes, Plan A for bringing about a decent outcome in Syria.
I humbly suggest that it might be worthwhile to work on a Plan B, on the off chance that Plan A is not immediately forthcoming.
Shooting rockets at an embassy is treated differently from shooting rockets at al Qaeda and Haqqani network commanders, and the term you use to describe this is "double standard."
"You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean."
It sure would be a hell of a coincidence if spontaneous outrage over something on YouTube just happened to turn into a rocket attack on an American embassy on September 11.
Apologize for what? Having the same enemies that we have?
The LIbyan government did no wrong here. Libyans fought to defend the consulate, to defend Americans. The Libyan government is a loyal, decent, democratic ally. They stood with us, and we stand with them.
Obama will have to take drastic and severe actions against the Libyans and their government.
What are you TALKING about? Anti-government mob attacks American consulate; government forces fight to defend the consulate, but are overcome; anti-government extremists burn down embassy, kill the ambassador - and your conclusion is that the response will have to be against the government?
That makes absolutely no sense. The Libyan government has condemned these murderers, and fought to stop them.
I don't think Barack Obama, the American public, or the American media are the ones failing to distinguish between the murderers and Libyans in general; I think that's YOU doing that.
The argument The Iraq War squandered American blood and treasure on a fruitless quest to impose American empire on the Middle East (Iraq was not related to 9/11). is significantly undermined when you later go on to argue that going after those responsible for 9/11 is equivalent to the Iraq War.
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Why hasn’t the U.S. targeted other “terrorist”
groups like Hezbollah, the IRA, the P.L.O. or the Sendero Illuminoso with drone assassinations?
Because Congress hasn't invoked its war powers against them, as it did against al Qaeda and their Taliban allies in the September 2001 AUMF.
Who drew up the extrajudicial assassination approval system?
How was the system approved?
Base-stealing terminology aside, the answer is, the same people who draw up the target-selection process in any war.
What legal grounds is it based on?
The invocation of Congress's war powers in the September 2001 AUMF - that is, their declaration of war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
What burden of proof is required before one is deemed worthy of the “hit list”?
The same as in any other war - although there does seem to be an even higher standard in play here.
Gates went further than that, arguing that there was no important American interest in Libya that would justify any intervention.
Bacevich is excellent. He definitely knows his stuff.
I don't always share his positions, because I bring a different ideological viewpoint, but his arguments are always, from what I've seen, very solidly grounded in a deep understanding of the situations he writes about.
The implication is that we are at war with the entire rest of the world.
No, the implication is that the enemy with whom we are at war - al Qaeda - is located in several different countries.
Are they not located in several different countries?
For example, the Pentagon was very strongly against involvement in the Libya War. This was widely reported, with Secretary of Defense (and career Pentagon figure) Robert Gates making public statements against involvement all over the media. Obama overruled the military establishment when he decided in favor of supporting the international action.
These are not well-informed people. They are not reality-based. They're happy to merely check their guts and assume that the facts of every situation just gotta be what their pre-determined narrative predicts they would be.d
Attributing this problem to the Pentagon, instead of to the political leadership, is a glaring error that greatly impedes understanding of the issues he tries to write about.
I don't know why you keep linking to him as if he is some kind of insightful expert on military matters. He is to military affairs what the average internet libertarian is to tax policy: they don't know anything except that they're against some stuff, but they use enough big words to fool people who also don't know anything about the field into thinking they are well-informed.
Sez who, “we’re good at” counter-terrorism? Trillions of dollars to maybe kill a few hundred “terrorists?
We didn't spend trillions of dollars try maybe kill a few hundred terrorists. We spent trillions of dollars on the Iraq War and on the post-al Qaeda war in Afghanistan, neither of which was about killing terrorists.
Once upon a time, JT understood the difference between Saddam and bin Laden, between occupying Iraq and stopping terrorism, between invading a country and fighting a cadre of terrorists, between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.
Not anymore, though. Remember all of those old statements about the Iraq War having nothing to do with 9/11? That is "no longer operative."
Drone attacks, or any other sort of attacks, against an enemy that has attacked you are legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter. It would be difficult to imagine a more textbook example of legitimate self-defense than shooting at a foreign terrorist organization that has staged attacks on your country and is attempting to stage more.
And there is not even the slightest hint of evidence that torture has occurred under Obama. As we learned from Abu Ghraib and the torture memos, torture doesn't stay secret. It gets out. People talk, orders are given, and the truth comes out. It's been almost four years now since Obama issued the executive order banning torture, and no such evidence has emerged.
So, you're saying that re-invading Iraq is merely "more of" withdrawing from Iraq?
If you say so.
The vehement bigotry with which people feel entitled to discuss Americans would never be tolerated if the subject was any other peoples in the worlds.
Which is to say, stick it where the sun don't shine, chumpy. You're not the only person on the planet who's ever read Howard Zinn.
A silly analogy that only works if you accept as an undisputed proposition the notion that any American use of force, in any place, for any reason, is inherently evil.
Your description of Obama "simply" implementing the AUMF Bush negotiated. If the total withdrawal of all American troops and the abandonment of the bases (and, therefore, our ability to station forces there like in Kuwait) was such an automatic, easy thing, then why didn't anyone, left or right, say this in 2008? John McCain was quite determined to stay there for fifty why not a hundred years. People on the left were assuring me that there was no way Obama would ever withdraw the troops, because the MIC wouldn't let him and how could I be so naive?
Now, people on the left want to pretend that this development they were certain would never, ever happen was actually inevitable all along.
Well, no, it wasn't. It was a very open question what we would do. The troops would still be fighting in Iraq if John McCain or Mitt Romney had won in 2008, AUMF or no.
My big takeaway from Romney's comments about "drones are not enough, you need a plan for the Middle East" is that he does not approve of Obama's policy of limiting the conflict to one between the US and the members of a small death cult, and instead, wants to return the the Bush era, when the 9/11 attacks, and our response, were envisioned as a grand geopolitical conflict that will turn on "control" of states by American clients.
Like Bush, he's not interested in solving the real problem (al Qaeda), and wants to go back to playing around on the Risk board instead.
This does remind me of Iraq where forming a government often took many months, even after a successful (purple fingers) election.
You seem to be conflating three different things - the establishment of functional state services, the establishment of a functional system of democracy, and the establishment of a stable governing coalition within an parliamentary democracy.
In Iraq, the former was established relatively quickly, while the second took much longer (and is still ongoing). In Libya, it's just the opposite. They set up their democratic national government quite quickly, but the government is having trouble establishing its writ across the country. This is probably best explained by the absence of a foreign military in the aftermath of the dictatorship falling. It's hard to have a real democracy with the US Army patrolling your streets, but it's easy to establish government writ. Similarly, it's easier to set up a functional democracy when your country isn't under military occupation, but it's a lot harder to build a state that can enforce its writ.
As for the third, look at Italy. Some countries have frequent changes in leadership, and it's not the end of the world.
I was pleasantly surprised by the attention the Transitional National Congress's statements of policy gave to environmental issues during the war.
As if they didn't have enough to worry about.
Act 3: Wherein the Libyan people realize what a pain in the ass democracy is.
It's like the old joke about gay marriage: why should straight people be the only ones who have to suffer?
In the most relevant area, that of bilateral arms negotiations, Obama's record of working successfully with the Russians is rather impressive.
Was it "pandering to Russian leadership" to negotiate the New START agreement?
I wonder if you consider New START, like its predecessors under Reagan and Gorbachev, to demonstrats "a lack of resolve and leadership on his part." I certainly don't - I think it takes a great deal of leadership and resolve to restart nuclear arms reduction talks with the Russians after Dubya so dramatically trashed them (and the Nobel Committee agrees).
Everything that the critics are saying about Tesla and the Volt today, they were saying about the Prius ten years ago. They're only selling a few, they lose money on every sale - it's exactly the same script.
And look at Toyota's hybrid production today.
Bill,
I have long considered the threat of Iranian nukes to be overhyped, because I have long considered that Iranian regime, while quite nasty, to be a basically rational actor.
But for them to endure this punishment instead of opening their facilities, or just buying the stuff from Russia instead of making it themselves, is quite irrational. It demonstrates a willingness to accept damages completely out of proportion from any real-world gains.
It's a shame that there is absolutely nothing the Iranian regime can do to get the world to remove the sanctions.
I was thinking about this 'foreign' concept, and Mitt Romney's life is a lot more foreign to me than Barack Obama's.
I know people whose father was black. I know people who lived in Hawaii for a few years. I know people who lived overseas for a time. I know people with African last names. Doesn't everybody?
On the other hand, I don't know a single person whose father was CEO of a car company. I don't know a single person who has a car elevator, or a dressage horse.
Is my experience all that unusual? Apparently not.
The most important way Obama has minimized casualties, Bill, has been his redefinition of our efforts from a "War on Terror," shrinking it down to a war against al Qaeda.
Yes. Yes, it has. So...now what? We can't keep doing this forever.
Too far! Even if a perfectly-appropriate enemy is hiding among civilians, Geneva still requires that every effort be made to avoid civilian casualties. The drone program has (at least under this President) been carefully managed towards that end, but that is the requirement of international law.
That is a site about Afghanistan, JT.
MarkF's comment was "There are now 100,000 U.S. paid contractors operating in Iraq, along with 40,000 other NATO troops. Nothing is being said about the contractors”
Ah, I see MarkF has cited the error in a comment below.
All righty then. Carry on.
Not much. He withdrew the troops from Iraq against the desires of the military brass, abandoning the bases from which they had planned to "project power throughout the region." Ditto the missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Ditto getting involved in Libya. Ditto refusing to use more force there once we did become involved. Ditto ending the F-22 program. Ditto including, and sticking to, the military cuts in the debt ceiling deal. Ditto announcing a timeline up front for the surge and drawdown in Afghanistan.
On all of these matters, and more, Obama crossed the military leadership, uniform and civilian, including in several instances his own Secretary of Defense and Direction of Central Intelligence. If you believe the line that his Afghan policy represented a cave, as opposed to his actual preference, then that decision stands out as an exception to the general pattern.
A slight correction, Travis: Obama does not cite, as Bush did, "executive authority" to conduct drone strikes or otherwise "have people killed," but bases his authority on the Force Authorization passed by Congress.
Also, the strikes against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqanni network have come at a great cost to our "Middle Eastern politics." They have greatly strained our relations with Pakistan and Yemen, and unquestionably harmed our standing among the public in the region. Indeed, that is the strongest argument against them - that our other foreign policy goals in the region should outweigh the security interest we have in destroying al Qaeda (or, at least, that they do at this point, with al Qaeda already so weakened).
Your comparison is ludicrous. The vast majority of those killed in Hiroshima - upwards of 90% were civilians.
Even the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that Professor Cole links to - a strongly anti-drone source, which puts out numbers for the purpose of arguing against their usages - postulates that civilian deaths represent 1/4-1/3 at the highest end.
To compare the American and Israeli situations requires one to equate the Palestinians with al Qaeda.
It also requires you to ignore the legal (recognized by both international and domestic law, declared by Congress) between the U.S. and al Qaeda.
There is nowhere near 100,000 U.S. paid contractors in Iraq. You are off by a factor of 8-10. Nor are there 40,000 NATO troops in Iraq.
Where are you getting this stuff?
No, what it implies is that there is a segment of anti-Obama Democrats larger than the cast of Friends.
Is your goal to see how small a decimal the New York Times will print on its front page?
Refusing to waste his presidency on the hopeless task of getting the contemporary Israeli leadership to make peace doesn't seem like a mistake to me. It seems like a pretty reasonable call.
It's tough to say that Obama made a mistake using sanctions against Iran to deflect the push for war, since he has successfully deflected that push, which was his goal. Your claims are that this "might" result in something. Well, let's hold off on calling it a mistake until there is something other than the successful accomplishment of the goal you identified - resisting the push for war - to point to.
I don't understand #4. Yes, Libya is having trouble getting its state up and running. How is that Obama's mistake? You don't spell out anything he did, or didn't do, that he should have handled otherwise.
Ditto with Syria. You're very vague about what he should have done instead - and for good reason! You don't know what the right move would have been, I don't know, Hillary Clinton doesn't know, and neither does anyone else.
What other "port in the Gulf" features a government better than Bahrain's? What other "port in the Gulf" would have welcomed an American naval base? I'm all ears.
And the decimation of al Qaeda through the drone program is perhaps the greatest success in American foreign policy in decades.
Well, there's the thing: "roughly comparable enemy force." There are no roughly comparable enemy forces.
Which sort of proves the point, no?
Was it not Romney who brought up the era "since World War Two," and claimed that we spent that era allying ourselves with democratic governments and promoting human rights?
Perhaps because there isn't the slightest chance of the United States invading Iran, and everyone in Washington knows it. There is a lot of bluffing going on.
Top ten.
I'm sure this could be a series if Prof. Cole was so inclined.
It was not closed for environmental reasons, but could not compete with cheap fracked shale natural gas.
Kinda sorta.
One of the reasons coal can't compete is the expense of complying with environmental regulations, which have been strengthened a great deal by EPA Direction Lisa Jackson.
What was it Barack Obama said way back when? "So it will be legal to build a coal-fired power plant. You'll just go bankrupt." Something like that.
The doctrine that gross violation of human rights provides a legitimate exception to the usual doctrine of state sovereignty, and the doctrine that the United Nations can rightfully authorize force against a state for such violations, are two of the greatest achievements of international affairs progressives (think Eleanor Roosevelt) in the past century.
The sheer number and diversity of the people Moammar Khadaffy managed to piss of is truly striking.
The United States, the House of Saud, al Qaeda, Baathist Syria, France, the Egyptian military, the Libyan people, the French, the Arab Spring government in Tunisia...not even the Russians or Chinese would lift a finger to save him.
Truly, Moammar Khadaffy was a uniter, not a divider.
After all, if any military-aged male in Waziristan is potentially a militant then any military-aged male near an Air Force facility is potentially a drone pilot.
You are confused. The "military-aged males in the area" standard is NOT used for the purpose of targeting. The New York Times story you are referring to makes it very clear that much stricter standards are used to determine whether a target may be legitimately struck, and that the standard you refer to is used only assessing the damage after a strike occurs, when there are casualties beyond the individuals targeted.
And if it is acceptable for the US to kill civilians while pursuing US policy on foreign soil what is our basis for complaining when civilians are killed in the US by foreigners pursuing policy objectives?</i?
"Our basis" is the same as that in the Geneva Conventions - a recognition that the accidental killing of civilians in a war, and the deliberate targeting of them, are two very different things.
She'd like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.
Ms. Shah's comment that we should replace force with "non-lethal approaches" to al Qaeda terrorists reminds me of nothing so much as Karl Rove's slander that liberals wanted to give the people behind 9/11 "therapy and compassion."
Why are there so many people who think it's their responsibility to embody the straw man stereotypes that the right invents for the purpose of discrediting liberalism?
The basic premise of this piece - that there is something novel or particularly dangerous about President Obama's involvement in target selection in this war - is utterly refuted by history. Presidents have been signing off on what targets to bomb, or what beaches to land on, throughout the history of the Republic. The only difference between Obama's actions and those of previous wartime Presidents is that the targeting is much more precise, and kills far fewer people, than when Presidents were signing off on nuking Hiroshima or bombarding air bases and oil refineries.
I'm still stuck on Louie Gohmert's comments. A new Ottoman Empire? What the...?
Don't mess with Texas, Ottomans.
"The Middle East Region" is now "Iraq?"
I remember who supported the counter-revolution club in Libya, and it sure wasn't Obama's government.
Perhaps we can ask Hosni Mubarak how much help he got from the United States.
Obama can say these things with a straight face because the only lawless invasion and occupation of a Muslim country was the Iraq War, which he opposed from the beginning.
If you think speeches at the UN have even the slightest effect on domestic American politics, you profoundly misunderstand American politics.
I'll tell who doesn't suffer from this misconception: Barack Obama.
The United States has done more to promote international diplomacy to avoid war than any other nation on earth.
Remind me who hosted the Camp David Accords. Remind me who created both the League of Nations and the UN.
Opening a window on Mitt Romney's plane at 30,000 feet would, indeed, solve some of our problems.
Also, from the 60 Minutes interview:
I wonder if he found it strange that everyone in the studio began avoiding eye contact with him and pretend coughing.
Yeah, maybe someday.
Not today, though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoSFQb5HVk
Why are you declaring that these particular Islamist militias, as opposed to the much larger number of people in other, competing militias who drove them out of Benghazi, were "the ones who saved the people of Benghazi form certain genocide?"
The right and the far left both make the same mistake: the look at the most violent, most anti-American faction in any country and, no matter how small and despised it is by the populace of that country, proclaim it to be the truest, most legitimate representative of the people.
That wasn't AQAP. That was AQI.
It looks to me like the judges are standing up to secretiveness, not air strikes.
The American political system is based on having competing branches of government jealously guarding their rights and authority against other branches. These judges clearly do not like being told by the executive branch that they don't get to see the information they need in order to rule on the cases before them. Going from that observation, to the claim that they are tipping their hands on the air strikes themselves, is a bit of a reach.
That's funny - I thought the west supported the radical salafis' targets, like Mubarak.
To the American observer, it is alternately amusing and irritating the way all of the different factions in the Middle East accuse their opponents of secretly being CIA pawns.
You Salafis are just being used by the CIA! No, we're not! You liberals are the cat's paws! No, actually, you both are; we moderate Islamists are the only ones who aren't secret agents of Washington. And on and on and on...
I mean, they been doing it since those early successes in places like Italy and Souoth Korea and Notagainistan and Iran(oops).
...right up until they stopped doing so in 2011, and allowed Hosni Mubarak to be deposed.
There is absolutely no way the U.S. government would have ever allowed that to happen during the Cold War. Something dramatic changed in American foreign policy in 2011. It's time to come out of the Cold War mindset.
You are almost certainly right, Bill.
But still, I'm sure they're not shedding any tears over the possibility that the advisory could be interpreted that way - any more than Barack Obama thinks his statement about the Egyptian alliance was a gaffe.
Absolutely.
I don't like religious conservatives, in this country or elsewhere. I think it's a dangerous way of approaching politics.
But as Lyndon Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover: "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
Welcome to electoral democracy, political Islam.
The al-Nahda government is being criticized for not having arrested Salafi extremist Seif Allah Ibn Hussein, known as Abu Iyadh
If the U.S. government doesn't ban the showing of a movie, people think that means we support it.
If the Tunisian government doesn't arrest a Salafi extremist, people think that means they sympathize with him.
You know what liberals need? Missionaries.
Was.
Noting that Muslim societies weren't backwards a thousand years ago, when confronted with the good Perfesser's statement, is dodging the question.
As is changing the subject to an imaginary decline in American innovation.
Westerners and Western-educated folk who apologize for Muslims by invoking the depredations of the West are not helping make things better.
Westerners who apologize for Muslim fanatics by invoking the depredations of the West are not trying to make things better in Muslim societies.
Rather, such people are trying to use an orientalized image of Muslims (all of whom share the viewpoint of those 200 Moroccan marchers, doncha know) as a weapon in their own political conflicts with other factions in their own countries.
Great. In ten years, people in the Arab world are going to have a better understanding of Martin Luther King than people in the United States.
They're actually getting his real words. For the past thirty years, we've been fed the myth of Teddy Bear Martin Luther King, a kindly sort of fellow who travelled around the country giving patriotic speeches and telling black people not to be violent. Lemme tell you, conservatives LOVE Teddy Bear Martin Luther King!
You see, he had this philosophy which he called "Non-violent mumble mumble mumble... "
This is hardly unique to Muslim violence, though.
In the 1990s, during the breakup of Yugoslavia, the situation was frequently described in Colin Powell's phrase, "Those people have been killing each other for centuries." Of course, Serbs and Croats and Bosnians had been living peacefully in an integrated society for decades, and it was only after Milosevic engaged in shameless rabble-rousing for political purposes that the ethnic violence started, but it the overwhelming view in the United States was that culture, not politics, was to blame.
Hysterics on all sides.
Iran is always 3-5 years from having a bomb, and the United States is always 6 months from bombing them.
Another falsehood buried in that statement: the equation of putting someone in jail with issuing a condemnation.
Because, of course, Obama and the American State Department have condemned the movie.
For you to write about overthrowing democratic leaders and propping up dictators, in the aftermath of American actions in Egypt and Libya during Arab Spring, just goes to show how devoted people can be to a narrative, facts be damned.
No one claimed that it was - although all of the deadly anti-American violence (that in Libya) has been done by al Qaeda.
The only conflation being made here is from Sherm, who claims that targeting al Qaeda commanders in air strikes is "sending violence..." ordinary Muslims' "way."
The source in your Guardian article says: Grenier emphasised that the use of drones was a valuable tool in tackling terrorism
Sherm, your comment was about Yemen. Changing the subject to Iraq is merely covering your...error.
Good job, Joe, conflating the many dead bodies of “bugsplattery” with the relatively tiny number of what we used to call “terrorists” that happen to get killed by Hellfires.
Actually, even the most extreme estimates of civilian casualties from drone attacks claim only a small fraction of the casualties to be civilians. Professor Cole had a post featuring these numbers up just a few days ago - a post that you commented on, so I can only conclude that you are being deliberately dishonest when you make such a gross factual error.
When you stop checking your gut, and start making the slightest effort to comport your statements and beliefs with the available evidence, I might find myself more inclined to pay any attention whatsoever to your increasingly bizarre, consistently off-topic rants. As of now, when I see such a gross misstatement of fact as the very first statement out of your keyboard, I just stop reading.
Sending "their" way, Sherm? Who are "they?"
Good job equating al Qaeda commanders with the ordinary people in Muslim countries.
Violence never solved anything.
Let's ask the people in Misrata if they think the NATO air strikes solved anything.
Dude, zero of it is speculation.
Your statement to me appears intentionally ambiguous. Are you stating that the current violence against our diplomats and diplomatic missions is “just and necessary?”
No, I'm stating that merely noting that violence has occurred is not enough to draw a valid conclusion.
There are actually people on this thread - people who seem to consider themselves to be educated, morally-admirable people - who are bragging about their ability to believe that the crews raining down rocket fire on civilian neighborhoods in Misrata, and the people who ended that slaughter by using violence against that crew, are morally equivalent, and that their actions had similar consequences.
"The violence used to “dismantle” al Qaeda has also killed 100s of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan/Pakistan/and Iraq combined"
Iraq? You think the Iraq War was about dismantling al Qaeda?
I have some news for you: Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda. As Professor Cole has already pointed out, you have a severe reality problem.
Not even the most outlandish estimates of casualties from drone strikes claim that there have been tens of thousands of casualties. The high end of the estimate of civilian casualties is aroun 1000, in over a decade.
In the meantime, al Qaeda killed over 2000 civilians in one day in 2001. The embassy bombings killed over 200 in one day. The Bali bombing, another 200.
But these days, al Qaeda isn't able to carry out those operations anymore. Do you care? You can't even be bothered to acknowledge the much higher number of civilian deaths attributable to al Qaeda, so I doubt the prevention of thousands of additional deaths even registers for you.
That’s worked so well in the past
Actually, it did. For decades, between the Camp David Accords and, well, Thursday, this policy results in a robust alliance between the US and Egypt, including a security guarantee for Israel. From the point of view of foreign policy, it was an enormous success.
The parts of US foreign policy towards Egypt that need to change in light of the new political reality and the possibilities it created - and there are several - do not include these basic tools of statecraft.
The US has not managed the relationship with Pakistan well
The US has bigger fish to fry in Pakistan.
The Pakistani government didn't like the bin Laden raid, for instance. Too bad.
I'd prefer to have an excellent relations with Pakistan AND successfully demolish al Qaeda, but if those two goals come into conflict, the latter clearly has to take precedence over the former.
I don't recall the phrase "movie critic in chief" appearing the U.S. Constitution.
I want to know why he won't condemn the MVP: Most Valuable Primate movies. You want to talk about a piece of trash! It's about a monkey playing basketball! And they made a sequel!
Silence equals death, Mr. President! Do the right thing.
Violence is sometimes just and necessary, Obama's included.
The violence used to destroy the crews that were raining rocket fire down on Misrata saved thousands of lives.
The violence used to dismantle al Qaeda has probably saved tens of thousands of lives.
The violence used by the Vietnamese military to overthrow the Khmer Rouge saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The Libyan in Juan's picture tells us that the thugs and killers who murdered Christopher Stevens don't represent her society.
The western leftists in his comment threads assure us that they do.
I'm gong to go with the opinion of the nice young lady in the head scarf.
Libyans fought and died to protect Chris Stevens and the rest of the embassy staff, just like they fought and died to overthrow Gadhaffi. The actual Libyan people don't seem too terribly interested in the fake anti-imperialism one finds all to frequently on political blogs.
Right, just look at how angry these Libyans are about foreign intervention:
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/334946/LIBYA-FANTASTIC-FOUR.jpg
It is a common failure among western leftists to project their own opinions onto people in the developing world. The problem is, people in the developing world don't seem to be terribly eager to play along: http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/A2nzCX8CQAAIBZH.jpg
These mob actions were tiny compared to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, or the uprisings in Libya and Syria, or the rallies there were commonly staged in Iraq during the occupation.
It just isn't true that this is growing. If anything, the opposite is happening.
The basic question is Why Muslim r so sensitive and why the behave in a barbaric manner when ever they think that their feelings are hurt.
Muslims, as a whole, are not. This was not the spontaneous reaction of ordinary Muslims to the movie. This was the act of a small number of political extremists who used the movie as an excuse.
the pathetic condition in which they are living without any freedom of expression doesn’t cause any unrest?
I wonder, did you miss 2011? What do you think the uprisings across the Arab world - in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, elsewhere - were about? Cartoons?
OK, let's say that a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians is, as Schmit writes, Plan A for bringing about a decent outcome in Syria.
I humbly suggest that it might be worthwhile to work on a Plan B, on the off chance that Plan A is not immediately forthcoming.
"blatant double standard"
Shooting rockets at an embassy is treated differently from shooting rockets at al Qaeda and Haqqani network commanders, and the term you use to describe this is "double standard."
"You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean."
It sure would be a hell of a coincidence if spontaneous outrage over something on YouTube just happened to turn into a rocket attack on an American embassy on September 11.
Shooting at terrorists is so...so...senseless!
Perhaps you should read up a little more on Pakistan. It is certainly not just, or even mainly, American blood that is at stake:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/08/suicide_bomber_kills_57.php&sa=U&ei=Zg5SUI2qCOPY0QGntIDoDA&ved=0CB8QFjAD&usg=AFQjCNFt8hWUHg9wnHqLo_Q2QHj3lIBE0Q
My only point was that the Republicans will seek...
Ah, gotcha.
This isn't 1988. Nor is it 2002.
The world doesn't revolve around what Republicans say anymore, especially on foreign policy.
Six and a half million Libyans are now free, living in a democracy.
You think America is going to abandon people who stand up against dictators, because we're scared?
You don't understand Americans.
Uh, yeah, there's no way Hillary Clinton would ever pursue a foreign policy like Obama's...oh, wait, she's his Secretary of State. Never mind.
He even smirks like Bush.
Now watch this drive.
Apologize for what? Having the same enemies that we have?
The LIbyan government did no wrong here. Libyans fought to defend the consulate, to defend Americans. The Libyan government is a loyal, decent, democratic ally. They stood with us, and we stand with them.
Obama will have to take drastic and severe actions against the Libyans and their government.
What are you TALKING about? Anti-government mob attacks American consulate; government forces fight to defend the consulate, but are overcome; anti-government extremists burn down embassy, kill the ambassador - and your conclusion is that the response will have to be against the government?
That makes absolutely no sense. The Libyan government has condemned these murderers, and fought to stop them.
I don't think Barack Obama, the American public, or the American media are the ones failing to distinguish between the murderers and Libyans in general; I think that's YOU doing that.
The playing field has gotten a lot more level since the federal courts stiff-armed the state's voter ID law.
Yes, indeed, it is.
The FOP endorsed McCain in 2008, Bush both times and, oh yeah, endorsed on Willard M. Romney in his campaign for governor of Massachusetts.
...President Obama has a secret plan to take the phrase “In God we Trust” off the US currency.
Even worse, he's going to take George Washington off the dollar bill, and replace him with Afrika Bambaataa.
The 9/11 attacks are best framed as a war crime.
This either/or thinking is misleading. The concept that an act of war can also be a crime is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
They why were zero (0) of the attackers Iraqi?
Putting your beliefs into the heads of al Qaeda is not a good idea.
How many terrorist groups, when attacked, can count on a nation's military, including tanks, to join in their defense?
It's unfortunate that you marred an otherwise solid article with the misstatement They do not have congressional authorization.
The war against al Qaeda was authorized by Congress on September 20, 2001: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists&sa=U&ei=O9tPUJfROKfz0gHLrIGgAw&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHaxUpz3yt7xSDI_O2s7R4FE7PkEA
The argument The Iraq War squandered American blood and treasure on a fruitless quest to impose American empire on the Middle East (Iraq was not related to 9/11). is significantly undermined when you later go on to argue that going after those responsible for 9/11 is equivalent to the Iraq War.