July 4, 2016 – BREXIT (sort of)

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

 

In the future will Brits celebrate the Fourth of July on June 23rd?

 

Paul Meringoff of Power Line posts that the Brexit result is another example of White House cluelessness.

President Obama and his foreign policy team are perpetually surprised by the world. The rise of ISIS, the fall of Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood leader who succeeded him, the chaos in Libya, Putin’s aggression, Netanyahu’s reelection — all of these key developments (and others) wrong-footed the president and his advisers. You might almost think they don’t understand the world at all.

Brexit is the latest manifestation of Team Obama’s cluelessness. Once again, the president has been caught by surprise. Surely, that is why, as Walter Russell Mead recounts, Obama, though strongly favoring the “remain” cause, did nothing to advance it until at the last minute he “parachuted in, made a speech, and expected his charisma and wisdom to work miracles.”

Many believe that Obama’s speech, in which he tried to brow-beat the British into remaining in the EU, was counterproductive. In any event, it failed to carry the day. …

… Mead concludes:

[R]arely has a presidency seen so many things go so badly for the U.S. in foreign policy. Obama’s track record is not looking good: at the end of his watch, the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia are all in worse shape than when he entered office, relations with Russia and China are both worse, there are more refugees, more terrorists and more dangerous terrorist organizations.

Obama’s fiercest critics say that much of Obama’s foreign policy wreckage is the intended result of his policy. They are right, I think, to some degree.

But Obama didn’t want Brexit. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that he wanted a failed state in Libya, an ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and a Ukraine compromised by Russian aggression.

Obama’s foreign policy failures cannot be understood without reference to his incompetence and inability to understand the world as it is.

 

 

And this. Two weeks ago the president was spanked by 51 State Department career foreign service officers who dissent from his passivity in the Middle East. Of course, the media made little mention so we have a piece from Austin Bay in The Observer.

Dissenting State Department officials are demanding President Barack Obama wage war on the Assad dictatorship—which is a short step away from demanding regime change.

Late on June 16 The Wall Street Journal reported that the “near collapse” of the current ceasefire had spurred 51 “mid-to high-level State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy” to sign a “dissent channel cable” calling on the Obama Administration to target Syria’s Assad regime with repeated “military strikes.”

At the moment, the article remains behind The Journal’s paywall, so I’ll include several extended quotes. Journal reporters who personally reviewed the cable described the document as “a scalding internal critique of a longstanding U.S. policy against taking sides in the Syrian war, a policy that has survived even though the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of violating cease-fire agreements and Russian-backed forces have attacked U.S.-trained rebels.”

The dissenters argue “Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield.” …

… Obama’s Syrian chemical weapons red-line fiasco is a major factor in this mess. Obama had warned the Assad regime that using chemical weapons on civilians was a red-line—implying he would respond to chemical weapons employment with a punitive military attack. On August 21, 2013 a nerve gas attack by Assad regime forces killed approximately 1,500 Syrian civilians. In the aftermath Obama’s “red line” promise was exposed as a bombastic falsehood that sure sounded macho on CNN and MSNBC.

Obama “talked back” his warning. Red line? Here’s the White House transcript, so judge for yourself.

Oh heck, here it is, from August 20, 2012—a year and a day before the nerve gas attack

President Obama:

“…the point that you made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria; it concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made a judgment. Gates says Obama’s failure to respond was a “serious mistake” that damaged U.S. global credibility.

Did it ever. State Department pros agree. …

 

… During the George W. Bush Administration, when dissent was the highest form of patriotism, State’s Dissent Channel policy dissenters would instantly become 24-7 cable news channel heroes—you know, lionized public servants speaking truth to CheneyBusHitler power? The intense, relentless media attention would have translated a heavy intellectual blow into a heavy political blow. Restrained media treatment of State’s Syria dissent cable, however, softens the political impact of  its truly devastating intellectual and expert condemnation.

The Times report does note the Syrian civil war has killed 400,000 people. I think that tragic figure is highly credible.

For the Obama Administration, the 400,000 death toll is a moral challenge historians will not miss even if au courant media do. As I note in the Creators Syndicate column linked above (at StrategyPage.com) “If we had a Republican president I’m rather certain we’d be hearing demands that the U.S. has a ‘responsibility to protect’ vulnerable civilians. The abbreviation for this policy is R2P. During the Bush Administration the Obama Administration’s current U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, was a vocal advocate of R2P. Now? Not so much. History will note the 400,000 Syrian dead died on her president’s watch.” …

  

 

David Harsanyi writes on the “radical Islam” kerfuffle.

After a meeting with the National Security Council to discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, Barack Obama was angry. He’s more impassioned than we’ve ever seen him. He was speaking from the heart. He’s lashing out! Because you know what really grinds his gears? Republicans.

“That’s the key, they say,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. “We can’t defeat them unless we call them radical Islamists. What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”

A lot, actually.

As a matter of realpolitik, perhaps it makes sense to avoid the phrase “radical Islam.” We don’t want to offend the Mullahs, theocratic sheiks, oligarchic princes, Arab strongmen, and future junta leaders of the Middle East. We need to work with these people, after all. What should bother you, though, is that Obama constantly tries to chill speech by insinuating that anyone who does associate violence with radical Islam—which includes millions of adherents—is a bigot. This is a president who also intimates that anyone who is critical of everyday Islam’s widespread illiberalism—for example, all nations where homosexuality is punishable by death are Muslim—is also a bigot. …

  

MORE THAN TWO SCORE GREAT CARTOONS!