Foreign policy-wise, Barack Obama has been consistently wrong about pretty much everything. Nothing symbolizes Obama foreign policy fecklessness more than Yemen. Just a few months ago Obama pointed to Yemen as a model of his foreign policy success and it has collapsed.
Those in the know have long pleaded with Obama to listen to the commanders on the ground.
Not Obama.
In large part because his advice was being ignored, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was critical of Barack Obama in a Rolling Stone article written by Michael Hastings. McChrystal was fired, Hastings is dead.
In a NY Times article describing McChrystal’s termination Obama uttered something that is ironic for a man who thrives on division and whose power derives entirely from pitting one group against another:
“I welcome debate, but I won’t tolerate division,”
McChrystal corrected surmised that Obama wanted out of the wars more than he wanted to win them:
McChrystal and his inner-circle officers have spent much of the past decade either at war or in some of the Pentagon’s most demanding staff positions. The grinding deployments have fueled tension between the White House and the military that dates to the Afghan strategy review last fall. Some military officials, including many on McChrystal’s staff, interpreted the president’s decision at the time to impose a deadline on the U.S. troop surge as a sign that the administration wasn’t serious about winning the Afghan war.
Obama pledged America that all troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.
President George Bush warned that removing all troops from Iraq prematurely would have catastrophic consequences:
To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready … would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.
Barack Obama consistently opposed anything that the military sought to win in Afghanistan.
The next month, General McChrystal was surprised when James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s first national security adviser, told him that the Obama administration would not consider sending more forces until the effect of arriving units could be fully evaluated.
That contradicted the guidance that General McChrystal had received from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that he should submit an assessment in August of the additional forces that might be required, he writes.
At an Oct. 8, 2009, video conference with Mr. Obama’s National Security Council, differences again emerged when General McChrystal outlined his goals: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the population.”
That prompted a challenge by a Washington-based official, whom General McChrystal does not name, that the goal of defeating the Taliban seemed too ambitious and that the command in Kabul should settle instead for an effort to “degrade” the Taliban.
Obama didn’t listen. He knows everything better than anyone else, no matter what the issue until things go sideways. After promising he’d remove all troops from Iraq Obama claimed the decision to remove all troops wasn’t his.
Iraq was won. Obama said so. He abandoned plans to leave a residual force in Iraq.
Obama lost Iraq. It is the worst blunder of Obama’s foreign policy. ISIS was spawned in the vacuum of the absence of US military presence in Iraq and Obama is directly responsible for that. George Bush warned us of the possibility in 2007.
Barack Obama also swore he’d end the war in Afghanistan and remove all US troops by 2014:
Obama has long promised to pull American troops out of combat positions in 2014, yet at a 2012 campaign event he slipped up and said he would remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of that year.
‘We are bringing our troops home from Afghanistan. And I’ve set a timetable. We will have them all out of there by 2014,’ he said.
His spokesman at the time, Jay Carney, immediately went into damage control mode, telling reporters, ‘He never said that all the troops would be out.’
Obama knows he screwed up Iraq- which is why he’s agreed to maintaining a stronger US military presence in Afghanistan. It’s the first smart thing Obama has done in a long time but the truth is he doesn’t really care that Afghanistan falls. he just doesn’t want it to happen on his watch.
Obama once said that Trayvon Martin could be his son but ISIS is made up of Obama’s sons. He spawned them. Had Obama left a proper residual force in Iraq, ISIS would today be what he once dismissed them as- the JV.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.