Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Difference Between the Real World and Obama's


By Alan Caruba

I keep wondering what it must have been like to be a young student at West Point listening to their Commander in Chief’s platitudes and ignorance wash over them. West Point is where our nation’s future leaders in war receive an education in how to protect the nation by crushing our enemies, if Presidents and Congress will let them.

Unfortunately for them, this President seems to think that climate change is the nation’s biggest enemy and that a loose coalition of Islamic fanatics is the other. There was no talk of an increasingly aggressive China, a Russia that seized Crimea and would like a chunk of the Ukraine, or an Iran that got out from under some strong financial sanctions and will continue to build its own nuclear weapons no matter what Obama and other negotiators may want.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians have decided they would prefer a military dictator again as their president instead of a leader from the Muslim Brotherhood. Such choices are endemic to the Middle East. Real democracy is rare there. In Syria its dictator, Bashar al Assad, is still in power when, it could be argued, a few hours spent bombing his air force and other military facilities might have cost him his job and saved over 160,000 lives. So now Obama is reluctantly arming his opposition, some of whom could end up being as oppressive as al Assad.

The highlight of Obama’s speech was his announcement that the U.S. would be out of Afghanistan by 2016 except for a small force to train its military. Here’s what I had to say about Afghanistan in November 2009, a few months into Obama’s first term:

“If you look back, you discover that the former Soviet Union had 100,000 troops there and spent ten years in Afghanistan…one day in 1989 they just packed up and went home to Russia. Shortly thereafter the Berlin Wall fell, followed by the entire Soviet government in 1991.”  And Afghanistan was deemed by Obama to be a “war of necessity.” Americans in 2009 would have been happy to depart, having been there for eight years with nothing to show for it.

Presidents who do not get the waging of war right end up killing a lot of American troops. Lyndon Johnson knew years earlier that he should have gotten out of Vietnam, but stayed on. And, yes, George W. Bush stayed on in Afghanistan and Iraq after achieving the initial goal of responding to 9/11 and then of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. War is not about nation-building.

The U.S. stayed on in Europe after WWII because the Soviet Union was the new threat there. We stayed on in Japan to ensure it learned how to govern itself without an all-powerful emperor and then because of a threat from North Korea and communist China. Internationally, we maintain a military presence by invitation in many nations because as the only global superpower we are also the only one that stands for freedom.

Obama has made it clear that he does not like our being a superpower. One need only look at the way he has reduced our military to pre-WWII levels.

How bad was the speech? When The New York Times published an editorial about it on May 28, it said “The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.”  How incompetent does Obama have to be to elicit this kind of criticism from one of the greatest voices of liberalism in America?

At this point in his second term with two more years to go, Obama has been a spectacular failure domestically, diplomatically, and on the battlefield he chose. He has told the Taliban when we will leave and they will be back because we are talking about the Middle East. As for the rest of the Islamists, Obama abandoned the phrase “a war on terrorism” early on.

As former Ambassador John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Surrender is Not an Option” said in a recent commentary, “Typically, Mr. Obama made no mention of seeking ‘victory’ in the war against terrorism, a still-foreign concept to him, in a war whose very existence he denies.”

The only victory Obama has ever prized is the winning of elections. He was nowhere to be found the evening our ambassador and three security personnel were killed in Benghazi and the next day he flew to Los Angeles to do more fund raising. When their bodies returned, he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied about a video as the cause of an event that occurred on the anniversary of 9/11.

We have two more years of Obama as President. That cannot bode well for the future, either here or around the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Alan, if I recall this president promised to remove all troops out of Afghanistan by 2014. That was changed to the end of 2014, and has now been changed to 2016. He never tells the truth.

GW had it right when he whispered in Cheney's ear that this guy does not have a clue!

TexasFred said...

You have heard the old adage about history repeating itself I am sure...

Afghanistan broke the back of Soviet Russia...

Apparently we learned noting from that apparently, and today were are still facing some of the weapons that WE gave the Mujahideen that they used against Russia...

Alan Caruba said...

And, Fred, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it...another old adage that appears to be true.

Ronbo said...

Alexander The Great invaded Afghanistan, but was forced to withdraw due to the resistance of the fierce tribes.

The Greek Empire fell shortly afterwards.

The British Empire invaded Afghanistan several times and was unsuccessful in the conquest of the country.

The British Empire fell.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

The Soviet Union fell in 1991.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001...

Afghanistan does have have a reputation for being the graveyard of armies, empires and superpowers.

Alan Caruba said...

Right you are, Ron. That's why, in 2009, I was already saying we should get out ASAP.

Lime Lite said...

Alan, sometimes I marvel at your world view. The USA does NOT have the right to impose their view of what’s right on the rest of the world. Have you ever considered that the Middle East can only function when they have dictators in place? Assad in Syria may not be the best person in the world, but he runs a country composed of many different Muslim tribes, as well as Christians. He kept the Christians safe. Now you’re telling me deposing of him is the answer? In Libya, under Ghadaffi, the country at least ran smoothly. The people had a good quality of life and were safe from the Muslim extremists. Enter USA to “save” them and look at the result! CHAOS. Same with Iraq and Afghanistan. Chaos, chaos and more chaos and death. Egypt tried it the USA way – i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood thugs – and look what they wanted all along. A military dictator. You know why? Because it works for them.

Now you have the USA once again sticking their noses in Ukraine. The CIA started the uprising, which lead to the coup of the elected president, and when the East Ukraine – and Crimea- fought the freaks in Kiev, YOU tell me it’s because of big-bad Russia. No, it’s because the PEOPLE rejected the freaks in Kiev, imposed on them by the USA. Putin isn’t the bad guy. In fact, he’s stopped at least 2 wars Obama wanted to start – one in Syria and one in Ukraine. Give me 20 Putin’s and I’ll take every one of them ahead of what your CIA and Obama regime is trying to do to the world.

I know you’re an American patriot and you love your country, but your country had done a lot of bad stuff in the world, trying to impose their “democracy” on others. My old civilised country South Africa was destroyed because of the interference in OUR domestic affairs by the USA and Britain. Look what it looks like today. It’s time America focussed on their own domestic issues – such as stopping the invasion of illegal immigrants and stopping the Progressive culture-destroying agenda – and leave other countries alone to look after themselves.

Sure, you can have an opinion but that’s where it should stop!

Alan Caruba said...

@Lime: It's hard to argue with your facts and logic.