Obama Foreign Policy
June 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. has commenced negotiations with the Taliban. The Afghan government is excluded from the talks, which I consider a disgrace. The U.S. has proved to be a worse than feckless partner. Why any state or group would ever again cast its lot with America, where there are other options, is beyond me. Quite apart from the exclusion of the Afghan government, the negotiations strike me as a classic case
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June 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
It really shouldn’t be difficult to understand Iran’s presidential election, assuming you pay attention to such things. If you get your news from the mainstream media, however, it might be close to impossible to understand it. As Paul demonstrates, going a little bit out of your way online you can quickly find just about everything you need to know about the election and the winner, one Hassan Rouhani. Take, for
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June 7, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I always expect the worst from Lindsey Graham, and he rarely disappoints. Today, Graham strongly backed Samantha Power for the U.N. ambassador post. But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was his statement that Power “will be a strong supporter of our close friend and ally Israel.” As I said, Graham rarely disappoints. I wonder what evidence Graham would cite in favor of his claim that Power, with her record
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June 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I think of our newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power in the words of the title of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book: “A Problem From Hell.” Power passionately believes that the armed forces of the United States should serve causes far larger than the national interest of the United States. Of the commenters on Power’s nomination, Ralph Peters is the only one I have seen make this point.
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June 5, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier today, I described Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to the U.N., as “virulently anti-Israel” and “Israel hating.” These are harsh words. Even some good faith supporters of Israel may consider them unfair. But let’s look at Power’s harsh words about Israel. For example, as I noted in this post: Power has expressed outrage at the way Israel has treated the U.N.’s faux peacekeepers in South Lebanon, the
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June 5, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
It was always just a matter of time until President Obama, once elected to a second term, handed a major position to his favorite foreign policy analyst, Samantha Power. Now, with Susan Rice moving from the U.N. to the White House as National Security Adviser, Obama is set to nominate Power as ambassador to the U.N. Power’s selection for a highly visible position had to await Obama’s second term because
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May 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So Obama thinks the problem of terrorism has receded to pre-9/11 levels and we can call the whole thing off. Won’t be long now before the New York Times re-runs the Larry Johnson article from July 2001, “The Declining Terrorist Threat,” which confidently proclaimed: Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming
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May 27, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Which side should the U.S. wish to see prevail in the Syrian civil war? For me, the correct answer has seemed to be: neither side, just as it was during the war between Iran and Iraq. A victory by the butcher Assad has never looked like a good outcome, and it looks worse than ever now that Hezbollah and Iran are backing him so strongly. But a victory by the
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May 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
David Horovitz is the founder and editor of the Times of Israel and an extremely reasonable man. When he emails to let me know that he has “just written and published this rather angry op-ed,” as he did this morning, I pay attention. David’s column is “Memo to Kerry: It’s not the economy, stupid.” Subhead: “The secretary’s ridiculous talk of $4 billion in private investment for the Palestinians demonstrates that
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May 22, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
We’ve always viewed the Benghazi scandal in terms of (1) the Obama administration’s failure to provide requested security before the attack, (2) its conduct, or lack thereof, during the attack, and (3) its cover-up after the attack (along with, as we recently learned, its retaliation against those who didn’t feel comfortable about the cover-up). But there’s always been a fourth element — the administration’s failure to bring the attackers to
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May 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
You may have read in the news that John Yoo has suffered the indignity of being banned from Russia by the government of Vladimir Putin. Yoo and 17 others were banned in a tit for tat response a day after the United States imposed sanctions on Russians guilty of human rights violations. Yoo was in good company, included in a group of four men who Russia’s Foreign Ministry said were
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April 25, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Chuck Hagel has announced that the United States believes, “with varying degrees of confidence” that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its people. Taken literally, Hagel’s statement makes no sense. No one — and no entity — can believe something with varying degrees of confidence. What Hagel means, I assume, is that the relevant players within our government believe that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against
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April 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We mourn the passing of Margaret Thatcher, but President Obama is not exactly choked up. Like us, he puts her in the same category as Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, but in Obama’s scheme of things, that’s a bad place to be. Over at NRO Charles Cooke observes: The news that the Obama administration will sit out Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, sending from the current crop only the charge d’affaires from
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April 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Over the weekend, I wrote about how the Palestinian Authority blew off John Kerry’s efforts to keep Salam Fayyad in power as Prime Minister. Kerry’s failure, I believe, “demonstrates once again the lack of U.S. influence over the PA” and the futility of our efforts to cause it to make any concessions to Israel. As for Fayyad, I dismissed him a “PA pol.” But, plainly, that’s not how the U.S.
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April 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has accepted the resignation of his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad despite pleas from the U.S. and the EU that he retain Fayyad. Actually, I am wrong to say “despite.” According to Fatah officials, U.S. pressure on Abbas to keep Fayyad in power proved counterproductive. Let us not probe the merits of Abbas’ decision to accept Fayyad’s resignation or explore the demerits of Fayyad’s tenure as
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April 6, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We’ve been following the Egyptian government’s harassment of Bassem Youssef, the Arab world’s most popular television comedian, “for the supposedly criminal use of satire in jokes about President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist political party,” as Robert Mackey and Kareem Fahim put it in this New York Times post. We posted the video of Jon Stewart’s critique of the Morsi government here. In an update Mackey and Fahim posted a
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April 4, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I want to second Steve’s thoughts about Kim Jong Un and North Korea. The recent words and moves by North Korea strike me as saber rattling for a purpose (or, more likely, purposes). One purpose, as Steve says, is to obtain new concessions from the U.S. Another purpose may well be to shore up the dictator’s standing with the military. It has been reported that Kim Jong Un has turned
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