Obama is inept in international politics.

Do you think the world got safer during the eight years of Bush's reign. Yes or no!

 

Barring 9/11 which should be attributed to Clinton and in any case is a one off event, yes. The world was safer. And the Middle East, the Middle East... comparing to the (*)(*)(*)(*) that's gong on there today, we were much better off under Bush.

 

I love how many liberals give Obama a pass for doing exactly what he said he would not do under any circumstances. Under Obama, the pentagon made him do it. Under Bush, he made the pentagon do it. Under Obama, the intelligence manipulated Obama. Under Bush, he manipulated the intelligence.

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Do you think the world is safer today than it was eight years ago? I sure don't.

 

I think that the US should not arm Al Qaeda ("Syrian rebels"as Obama and congress call them- which has been PROVEN to be untrue)

I think the US should be thankful that Russia is cleaning up this administration (and Congress') mistakes in the middle east.

Make friends with Russia and China and maybe even Brazil (an apology for all the spying from Obama would be nice).

We need to worry about us now. If we dwell in the Clinton administrations mistakes of not killing UBL and his crew, if we dwell in the Iraq war from GWB...it does us no good.

We made mistakes. Time to get the F out of there. Let them decide their fate. Once the nation is stable, then worry about helping them financially if we think it's the right thing.

 

I'm not sure what qualifies as me whining. Maybe an example so I know what your talking about?

 

Blair never said that.

 

I think what sent him off the rails initially was his first national security briefings. This is a guy with no military or national security background, who has an understanding of foreign policy based on college and The Nation Magazine. Now take that guy and imagine his first couple of classified Threat Briefings. He probably crapped his pants, being handed a world that was nothing like he imagined. However I think he gradually got back his ideological bearings. Since he won re-election it's been all Obama. I think his foreign policy goal now is to keep things from blowing up until he's out of office. That's probably why he extended the Afghanistan military mission until 2017.

I'm not sure what Vietnam has to do with Obama's foreign policy, and although I can see that Iraq should have been the overarching lesson for him, he turned around and basically did the same thing in Libya, only he cut out even the attempt at trying to stabilize the country after he destroyed the government. I still don't know why we did that.

That's a little outside the Obama era.

 

I believe when Colin Powell was in fact Sec. of State he was equally trusted by Israel and the Arab powers at that time precisely because of his military background. I believe once Powell was replaced by Rice and Clinton the fact they were women was a disaster. Kerry for me has been the most inept of any sec. of state in the history of the US.

People do not understand that in ME culture with the exception of Israel, in the Arab world women in politics are not treated as equals-that is why there are so few of them. That cultural disdain for women as equals to men also was displayed by Putin who has a pathological disorder when dealing with any woman particularly, Thatcher, Rice, Clinton.

Putin is a latent homosexual who can't deal with his own homosexual feelings and his lack of size. He's an open book example of a tiny pee pee trying to compensate and shriveling when it sees a woman.

The Arab world nly get serious when they are dealing with a military man who understands war and war posturing. That is a fact. Arab leaders in the ME aremilitary and men. The few that have been women, are Israeli, Golda Maer, Tzipi Levni and they both knew when to pull out and have men replace them so as not to have Arab leaders look like they were humbling themselves to a woman.

Fulbright under Clinton was respected by Arab leaders although she was a woman because she spent years in the diplomatic circles, had a husband that was well respected and had a strength that didn't require she prove herself like Rice and Clinton in public and knew like Maer and Levni when to become invisible.


Yes the ME was far different when Colin Powell was around. Far safer. Since Rice its gone downhill. Don't blame Bush. Bush did not finance or support ISIL. Point the finger and Rumsfeld and Chaney who created contract opportunities for Haliburton and made a fiasco of Iraq yes but that is nothing compared to what Obama has done.

As for Obama, what makes his regime so dangerous is unlike Bush he lied to his people and compromised state security by giving the Muslim Brotherhood flunkies he hired access to the CIA, FBI and Homeland Security files and compromising the operations of all 3 agencies, and the military of the US. No he was not told to do this by the Pentagon.

For me Obama is a traitor and a liar to the US people and their military because of his role with the Muslim Brotherhood. That is my opinion. Some people believe he exercised his democratic rights as the President which he did yes. I respectfully disagree with his alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and lying to his people about Israel, Iran, Egypt, ISIL, Benghazi on and on.

Was he a puppet and had no control of anything? Could be. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how much power he really had.

I find his handling of Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, the Kurds, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, India, Canada, the UK, Italy, Italy, Germany, China, Japan and France a disaster and a legacy that has insulted, alienated and caused each of these countries to have pulled way from the US as a potential ally.

It will be a disaster if people vote Clinton in. The Republicans need to smarten up, agree on a leader, have the others drop out, and have that leader call out Trump and Clinton and end this idiocy of Clinton and Trump posturing like fools while Obama holds the US hostage for his last year in office with no opposition.

 

That's not what he said. But the false narrative fits the view from the left.

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-04/lawrence-wilkerson-american-empire-deep-deep-troubleLawrence Wilkerson: "The American 'Empire' Is In Deep, Deep Trouble"

 

Here is full text. Seems to say Iraq war led to ISIS.


BLAIR'S 'APOLOGY' IN FULL: HOW THE FORMER PM FINALLY ADMITTED MISTAKES BUT STILL REFUSED TO SAY SORRY FOR TOPPLING SADDAM
Appearing on the US TV network CNN Tony Blair was asked directly whether the decision to enter Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein had been 'a mistake'.
He replied: 'You know whenever I'm asked this I can say that I apologise for the fact that the intelligence I received was wrong.
'Because even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people against others, the programme in the form we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought. So I can apologise for that.
'I can also apologise, by the way, for some of the mistakes in planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you had removed the regime.
'But I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam. I think even from today 2015 it's better that he is not there than he is there.'
Mr Blair was then asked whether the invasion of Iraq was the 'principle cause' of the rise of ISIS.
The former Prime Minister said: 'I think there are elements of truth in that. But we have got to be extremely careful otherwise we will misunderstand what's going on in Iraq and in Syria today.
'Of course you can't say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.
'But it's important also to realise – one, that the Arab Spring which began in 2011 would also have had its impact on Iraq today. And two – ISIS actually came to prominence from a base in Syria and not in Iraq.
'This leads me to the broader point, which I think is so essential when we are looking at policy today. We have tried intervention and putting down troops in Iraq. We've tried intervention without putting down troops in Libya.
'And we've tried no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria.
'It's not clear to me that even if our policy did not work, subsequent policies have worked better.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...stonishing-apology-TV-show.html#ixzz3qWtYcPuW
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I see a couple of issues. None of the Republican candidates appear to have any significant foreign policy experience. That is especially true of Carson and Trump who seem to be the overwhelming favorites.

And despite all the rhetoric there really seems to be no Republican ideas for dealing with the crisis in Syria or with the problems in Iraq and Afganistan. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize the Obama performance but such criticism should be followed with alternative ideas. And Republican ideas seem noticeably lacking.

 

Probably something like that.

Vietnam was an earlier example of excessive intervention gone wrong. It was an analogy - only instead of "communism" we are fighting Islamic extremists... or in the case of Iraq, just some jerk who happened to be keeping Islamic extremists in check. The difference though, is that our intervention against Islam only radicalizes it, thus being largely counterproductive, while intervention against Vietnam was just futile.

Everything happens in a context. While I'd agree Obama hasn't done much to make things better, it's still true that he wasn't the one who originally created that mess. That happened as soon as we invaded Iraq the 2nd time. Afghanistan is a bit trickier of a situation. I feel invasion was justified, and our early actions did yield some positive results, but I'm not sure if it's really a country that can be tamed anytime within the next lifetime or so, and least of all by us. It would have to be a country more culturally like them, if there is such a place.

 

I supported the Afghanistan invasion too, and still do I guess, although I think it's gone off the rails. We can't leave until we can insure that Al Qaeda can't come back, and we can't do that until we're sure that the current Afghani government can successfully beat the Taliban (or at least keep them to a manageable level). The problem is that we can't defeat an insurgency like the Taliban while they have a safe haven, and we've made no steps to make sure they don't have a safe haven. Since it's unlikely we're going to get any more help from Pakistan than we already have, the only alternative is to fortify the border with Pakistan, which we've avoided doing. If we had been doing that the past decade we might have results now, but it's more likely that President Hillary will pull us out in 2017 and hope for the best.

 

Honestly, just backing out might actually be for the best like you said Lil Mike.

Let's just admit that we're a bunch of armchair theorists here and that all of our "answers" mostly come from ideology on how you "win" this kind of fight. The ME isn't like WWI or WWII, where we had a clear and uniformed enemy. Maybe the best answer, even if it is the one that the people disapprove of, might be to play a minor, or even no, role in this and let the region find its own identity.

Democratization isn't something that you can just force on people and let's be fair, it's not like the U.S.A. were perfect angels after 1789 either. Just going hands-off on the region and letting it self-determine might be what is needed so that the ME might be able to finally pick itself up with a sense of pride and dignity and actually be players on the world stage for something more than just being a dumpster fire.

I'm willing to give President Obama and his team the benefit of the doubt but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't be held accountable. Like some posters have mentioned before, I suspect that the classified truth of the matter really changed the administration's approach to the region. I would also posit that there were definitely some strategic lapses despite the best of intentions. History will tell for Obama, just as it has for Bush.

But let's not pretend that the U.S.A.'s intervention is without a doubt what's best for the region. The "world cop" train of thought naturally leads to arrogance.

 

I don't view our Afghanistan intervention as primarily about nation building or introducing democracy. It was primarily to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. So with that country, I view democracy, or teaching girls to read or whatever the current do gooder notion is as secondary to making sure that Al Qaeda can't use Afghanistan as a training and operations base again. It's a lot less about world cop and a lot more about preventing more attacks on the US.

 

It's not demonizing, it's called calling it like it is. So what I hear you saying, is to not pick on those who wish to do us harm. Pacifism at its finest. Can't we all just coexist?? Mamby pamby.

 

It's been said that "a fish stinks from the head." Just who is the CIC??? Why, it's Barry from Honolulu. That is where the finger should be pointed.

 

no, it is demonizing. it is what you do. "I didn't vote for an anti-American muslim for president with a locked-down past, phony Social Security number and a racist attitude. I'll pray for you if you did." This entire statement is false and is more demonizing.

 

According to Bitter Lake it went off the rails way back in 2006 but still nobody thought about getting the hell out of there. How many more lives were lost or devastated after that, I wonder.

 

Barry from Honolulu was in charge of the Vietnam war? That might be a bit of a stretch. Actually it is somewhat doubtful that he even was in charge of the Iraq or Afganstan fiascos.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to defend Obama or deny his lack of accountability for US government failures. While it is true that the US President does not get to introduce legislation himself, or through a cabinet like leaders in Parliaments do and there is some path dependence in decision-making, he has made serious errors. The most egregious one was not reigning in Maliki when he was going after Sunnis in Iraq pushing them into seeking protection from Al Qaeda that evolved into ISIS. That one was Obama's and Obama's alone.

 

Does getting the hell out of there solve the problem?

 

There is no solution to Afghanistan, there never was a solution, and there never will be a solution; but at least getting out in 2006 would have precluded any further deaths and mutilations of the US military, don't you agree? And not only that - Afghanistan never was 'a problem' either.

 

Yes! I call a demon a demon when I see one. It's your problem if you want to live in your la-la fantasy world. My statement is fact, which liberals cannot accept.