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Walter Russell Mead surveys the Middle East and says, “Welcome to obama’s brave new world.”
ISIS is bigger, badder, richer, and better organized than any jihadi threat the United States has faced thus far. Its rise represents a foreign policy disaster of the first order.
A group more radical than al-Qaeda, better organized, better financed, commanding the loyalty of thousands of dedicated fanatics including many with Western and even U.S. passports? And this group now controls some of the most strategic territory at the heart of the Middle East?
Welcome to President Obama’s brave new world. After six years in office pursuing strategies he believed would tame the terror threat and doing his best to reassure the American people that the terror situation was under control, with the “remnants” of al-Qaeda skittering into the shadows like roaches when the exterminator arrives, Obama now confronts the most powerful and hostile jihadi movement of modern times, a movement that dances on the graveyard of his hopes. …
… One wishes we had a Republican President right now if only because when a Republican is in the White House, the media and the chattering classes believe they have a solemn moral duty to categorize and analyze the failures of American strategy and policy. Today that is far from the case; few in the mainstream press seem interested in tracing the full and ugly course of the six years of continual failure that dog the footsteps of the hapless Obama team in a region the White House claimed to understand. …
… Rarely has an administration so trumpeted its superior wisdom and strategic smarts; rarely has any American administration experienced so much ignominious failure, or had its ignorance and miscalculation so brutally exposed. No one, ever, will call this administration’s Middle East policies to date either competent or wise—though the usual press acolytes will continue to do what they can to spread a forgiving haze over the strategic collapse of everything this White House has attempted, …
… So here, alas, is where we now stand six years into the Age of Obama: The President isn’t making America safer at home, he doesn’t have the jihadis on the run, he has no idea how to bring prosperity, democracy, or religious moderation to the Middle East, he can’t pivot away from the region, and he doesn’t know what to do next. He’s the only President this country has got, and one can’t help but wish him well, but if things are going to get any better, he needs to stop digging. He probably needs to bring in some new blood, and he must certainly ask himself some tough questions about why so many of his most cherished ideas keep leading him and his country into such ugly places. …
Fouad Ajami, often in these pages, gets a send off from Bret Stephens.
… Consider a typical example, from an op-ed he wrote for these pages in February 2013 on the second anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak‘s regime:
“Throughout [Mubarak's] reign, a toxic brew poisoned the life of Egypt—a mix of anti-modernism, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. That trinity ran rampant in the universities and the professional syndicates and the official media. As pillage had become the obsession of the ruling family and its retainers, the underclass was left to the rule of darkness and to a culture of conspiracy.”
Or here he is on Barack Obama‘s fading political appeal, from a piece from last November:
“The current troubles of the Obama presidency can be read back into its beginnings. Rule by personal charisma has met its proper fate. The spell has been broken, and the magician stands exposed. We need no pollsters to tell us of the loss of faith in Mr. Obama’s policies—and, more significantly, in the man himself. Charisma is like that. Crowds come together and they project their needs onto an imagined redeemer. The redeemer leaves the crowd to its imagination: For as long as the charismatic moment lasts—a year, an era—the redeemer is above and beyond judgment.” …
Claire Groden posts on separatist voting in Scotland.
Scots are expected to turn out en masse for a September referendum that could cleave the British Isle into two countries. If a majority of Scots vote “yes,” then the state would splinter from the United Kingdom, limiting the latter’s access to Scotland’s fossil fuel reserves, Navy bases and kilts.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the U.K., Danny Alexander, frames the referendum in the economic effects for both sides. In an interview with Wall Street Journal editors this week, he said that 15 percent to 20 percent of Scots are still undecided and that those votes will depend on their pocketbooks rather than nationalistic sentiments. …
Turns out now the lowly crock-pot has gone high tech. Now it can take orders from your smart phone. WSJ has the story.
A Crock-Pot is one of the simplest and most trustworthy pieces of home-ec tech there is. Its hallowed history dates back nearly half a century. That ultra-basic interface—High, Low and Warm temperatures, plus a timer—is so foolproof there seems no reason to make it “smarter.”
So, when news came in January of a Smart Crock-Pot with Wi-Fi and the ability to be controlled by smartphone, I was thrown for a loop. As an enthusiastic home cook and professional gadget nerd, I welcome new kitchen technologies. But the very idea of a networked slow-cooker stokes a debate that won’t soon end: Just because you can connect anything to the Internet, should you?
Still, the slow-cooker is the one high-temperature kitchen appliance that we gladly leave on when we’re out of the house. That’s basically its point: If I want to make pulled pork but am nervous about leaving my oven unattended, out comes the Crock-Pot. …
Ann Coulter says the favorite American pastime is; Hating Soccer.
I’ve held off on writing about soccer for a decade — or about the length of the average soccer game — so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.
(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks, and drop fly balls — all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they’re standing alone at the plate. But there’s also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns, and slam-dunks
In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child’s fragile self-esteem is bruised. There’s a reason perpetually alarmed women are called “soccer moms,” not “football moms.”
Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That’s when we’re supposed to go wild. I’m already asleep. …