Shot in the Dark

Devalued

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Obama Administration’s Middle East policy is a puzzle, probably because there is no plan, only reaction to crises. Which is a good thing, according to some.

“But amid the confusion, some experts said that there cannot be an overarching American policy in the Middle East at the moment. The best the White House can do, they said, is tailor policies according to individual crises as they flare up. “I would be more concerned if we had some sort of overly rigid policy,” said Barbara Bodine, another former American ambassador to Yemen who is now the director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. “It is messy. It is contradictory. That’s foreign policy.”

Can you imagine being the next guy:

“Hello, Mr. Prime Minister? Hi, I’m the new President of the United States. I’m calling to invite your country to be allies with mine. What’s that you say — lied to and back-stabbed last time? Well, things will be different under my leadership. How long? The next two years for sure. After that, of course, I’ll have to start campaigning for re-election so certain compromises might have to be made, but . . . hello? Hello?”

Joe Doakes

We’re going to be paying for this presidency for generations.

Posted

in

,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

73 responses to “Devalued”

  1. kel Avatar
    kel

    an administration firmly founded on the premise that complex multivariate problems are “just too hard”. I’ve had clients like that – they went titsup.

  2. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    Obama’s undergrad degree from Columbia is in polisci with a major in foreign policy.
    Obama’s problem isn’t that he’s a socialist or that he is a secret Muslim, Obama’s problem is that he ain’t that bright and no one will tell him so.

  3. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Time to rethink the old post-Ottoman “strategy for the Middle East” idea, initiated by the British Empire and inherited by the US because of our previous dependence on Middle East oil.

    What some see as absence of strategy, others now understand as a slow disentanglement of the US from Middle East chaos. There is no “winning” against ISIS, only containment and degrading of capacity to reduce the threat from a metastasizing extremist movement.

    And unquestioning support of the Saudis, Israelis, Pakistanis, Egyptians and others, regardless of their actions, has quietly ended as well.

    It seems quite obvious to me that the nations of the region are going to be fighting their own battles with minimalist support from the US, at least unless the neocons like “Bomb ‘Em” Bolton somehow regain control of the White House.

  4. The Big Stink Avatar
    The Big Stink

    The question isn’t whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian. The question has become ‘has he made himself his own god?’

  5. kel Avatar
    kel

    “And unquestioning support of the Saudis, Israelis, Pakistanis, Egyptians and others, regardless of their actions, has quietly ended as well.”

    well Emery has finally outed himself as a devoted shill for Hilary Clinton’s “Smart Power ™”. Do you get paid for this Emery or are you just so deeply committed to the Clinton world view?

  6. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Market odds of a HRC Presidency are slightly below 50%:
    http://sports.betfair.com/?mi=107373419
    I personally think the odds are (much) higher, just because so many people like the idea of a female President and neither know nor care about the details.

  7. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    What some see as absence of strategy, others now understand as a slow disentanglement of the US from Middle East chaos.

    That’s right, puss for brains EmeryTheAntisemiticSoci@list. We have to let millions of people die before we decide ISIS will not stop at Mediterranian. It is pieces of amoral, depraved and soulless turds like you that never learn from history and beg for it to be repeated.

  8. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    There is no “winning” against ISIS, only containment and degrading of capacity to reduce the threat from a metastasizing extremist movement.

    I seem to remember the liberals making the same claim about Communism. Strange how that turned out, eh?

  9. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    What some see as absence of strategy, others now understand as a slow disentanglement of the US from Middle East chaos

    So, Emery – much as most of us would love to leave most of that part of the world to stew in its own filth, I can’t help but point out that the US economy depends heavily on trade with nations who are largely fueled (moreso than we are) by middle eastern oil.

    Remembering that, how does Obama’s “disentanglement” make sense?

  10. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    nations who are largely fueled (moreso than we are) by middle eastern oil

    Like China.

  11. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The US has supported some despots directly (notably, the Shah), but for the last 30 plus years we’ve mostly just bought the oil at the price OPEC sets. Over-reliance on extractive industries in an economy has led to despots the world over, regardless of direct American involvement. The Arab countries have no democratic tradition to draw on, and with rent-seeking so easy with oil exports, it is easy for a despot to stay in power. The US can help the Arab (and Persian) countries escape this trap by inventing technologies to help the world exit from the oil age. Until oil ceases to be such a huge fraction of exports in the OPEC countries, their prospects for democracy are slim, no matter what the US does. I think the US can and should try to encourage economic liberalization in Egypt and Turkey, where the lack of oil will help drive people development over oil development. But the US could sink into the sea tomorrow, and most of the OPEC countries would still be run by despots 10 years from now.

  12. kel Avatar
    kel

    “There is no “winning” against ISIS….”

    just as Napolean won’t attack russia
    Hitler will be contained at the Sudetenland,
    Whilhelm II is a reasonable sort
    the communists wont go into laos & cambodia
    Reagan can never triumph over the Soviets

    You’re a gem Emery

  13. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    It’s a dangerous world, but perhaps the US should stop trying to solve everyone’s problems.

  14. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    We’ve been involved in the Middle East because our economy depends on their oil. We prop up tyrants not because we like tyranny, but because they keep the oil flowing.

    Sounds as if we should be trying to become less dependent on them for oil. Perhaps we could shift to friendly allies such as Canada. Or maybe even pump oil on our own federal lands.

    Except President Obama is dead-set against both of those, too. So he’s withdrawing from the region upon which we are utterly dependent, while actively opposing any replacement.

    If the Russians or Chinese blocked us out of the Middle East, we’d see it as an act of war, attempting to collapse our economy and we’d be screaming mad. If our own President does it, we . . . .

  15. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    The reason the French are more nervous about an Iranian nuke than we are is because the French are within range of existing Iranian IRBM’s.
    The French understand that you cannot restrict chaos in the ME to the ME.

  16. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    What a strange view/comment. Israel already has missiles capable of reaching Moscow and Beijing – and has had them for over 2 decades. Furthermore, Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads, and Israel is not a signatory to the NPT.

  17. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    I think we need to give Obama’s foreign policy its own name, much as neo-Macchavelian politics has the name “Realpolitik.” Maybe “Aragula-Politik”, to show the lack of connection between its proponents and those who are victimized by it?

    And really more to the point, I’m thinking that any coherent policy towards the Middle East needs to start with a basic premiss; if your country or movement sells a lot of copies of “Mein Kampf”, murders innocents graphically in cold blood, launches rocket attacks from hospitals and elementary schools at the same, or hosts Holocaust denial conferences, your party is officially on the “excrement list” of the United States, and we will do what we can to sideline your “intellectual” tradition to the hog lagoon where it belongs.

  18. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    You understand, Emery, that the French are not worried about Israeli nukes?
    If the Iranians get nukes that they can launch with their IRBM’s, the French will have to deal with it, either by changing their foreign policy or by spending money on missile defense. They prefer a world where Iranians cannot launch nuclear tipped missiles at them. They probably would prefer that Israel had no nukes, but there isn’t anything that they can do about that.

  19. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    What a strange view/comment. Israel already has missiles capable of reaching Moscow and Beijing – and has had them for over 2 decades. Furthermore, Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads, and Israel is not a signatory to the NPT.

    I don’t recall the Israelis trying to take over the Mideast. They’re trying to survive, the Iranians are trying to conquer.

    I don’t recall Israelis being led by religious fanatics willing to die to bring the Messiah.

  20. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    Israel is too small physically and in population to flex its nuclear muscles. Iran is not.
    If Iran gets a bomb, the Saudis will start to develop the bomb (maybe they have already). Most Saudi oil wealth is around the Persian Gulf, and the population of that part of Saudi Arabia is heavily Shiite. The Iranians want that part of Arabia.

  21. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    It’s a mistake to single out Iran. What characteristics make Iran so much worse than North Korea, Pakistan, or Russia or whichever is the next nation that chooses to invest in this capability? A solution that centers around Iran misses the bigger question: As proliferation becomes harder to contain, how should we extend the lessons of the bipolar cold war to a multi-polar mix of many nations with nuclear capabilities?

  22. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    “As proliferation becomes harder to contain, how should we extend the lessons of the bipolar cold war to a multi-polar mix of many nations with nuclear capabilities?”
    Do what can be done to restrain the nuclear ambitions of other countries.
    This is not new policy. Back in the 60s we extended our nuclear umbrella to Britain in return for them halting nuke development. The French turned down our offer out of national pride.
    The problem of small countries building nukes is not out of control. The Iranians received their missile tech from the North Koreans. The North Koreans, Pakistan, and Iran got their bomb development skills from one guy, A. Q. Khan.
    The Indian bomb is about as dangerous to us as the French bomb. India’s strategic enemy, aka its target, is China, not Pakistan. The Indians don’t keep their IRBMs fueled. It would take them a week to launch one.

  23. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Russians want to rule the world, not destroy it to hasten the coming of the Imam. We’re not as worried about their nukes as those held by kooks.

    We didn’t want the Norks to get nukes and negotiated hard to stop them (remember the Six Party Talks) including sanctions on them and the people supplying them. The fact sanctions failed doesn’t mean we stop trying.

    Obama isn’t trying to stop nuclear proliferation, he’s encouraging it. That’d be like handing out assault rifles to drug cartels, you know innocents will end up dead. Oh, wait. . . .

  24. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    What makes the Iranians so dangerous? Other than their total incompetence at conventional warfare (the Iraqis fought them to a standstill, for goodness’ sake) and apocalyptic rhetoric from the pulpits of the mullahs, you mean? Other than the fact that the bomb gets them something they can’t get any other way, and is central to their ideology?

    Somehow this song comes to mind.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw

  25. Prince of Darkness_666 Avatar
    Prince of Darkness_666

    What makes Iran so dangerous? At the end of the day the Soviet Union and it’s leaders liked living. Iran and radical islam don’t have that concern. Either western values win or islam does. There is no other option. These people need to be killed before they kill us

  26. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    It’s pretty well known in foreign policy circles that what Obama wants to do is swap our alliance with Israel for an alliance with Iran — whether the Mullahs want to be our ally or not. Why he wants this is a mystery (*cough* Valerie Jarrett *cough*).
    The man is a fool. Obama calls Iran “The Islamic Republic of Iran.” Iran is not a Republic, it has a group of clerics that oversees its constitution and can act to change the constitution if they think that it has become un-Islamic. The people of Iran are not self-ruling.The private army of the Mullahs is called Hezbollah. it commits terrorist acts world wide. According to Obama, these terrorist acts, ordered by Islamic clerics to advance Islamic ends, and carried out by Muslims, are somehow not Islamic Terrorism.

  27. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The Republicans do not want an agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons. So much so that they have allied themselves with anti-western hardliners to scuttle an agreement.

    What the Republicans want is a war with Iran–a war they think the US will easily win. Of course, the US may appear to win initially but they inevitably lose the long game.

    Trapped in their arrogance and hubris it can be expected that the Republicans will ignore the inevitable splash back. And this will result in a Vietnam type escalation of war in the Middle East until the American public has a belly full.

  28. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    PM: Terrorism is not a concrete objective it is a ‘tactic’ and one cannot wage war against at tactic. It is akin to waging war against bad weather.

    Terrorism as a tactic can be used politically as in ‘The Terror’ of Robespierre during the French Revolution to intimidate the opposition. Or it can be used militarily because a steep asymmetry exists between the material strength of contending forces.

    But it still remains a tactic.

  29. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    OK, Emery, which Republican has endorsed a war with Iran? I must have missed that one.

    And yes, I know that the left is selling this horse manure, but it used to be that you had to provide evidence for a position.

  30. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Emery, you seem to be suffering from short-term memory loss. We already HAVE an agreement with Iran, which they’re breaking. This Wikipedia article has links – click them to refresh your memory.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_interim_agreement_on_the_Iranian_nuclear_program

  31. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery said Terrorism is not a concrete objective it is a ‘tactic’ and one cannot wage war against at tactic. “

    what unmitigated rubbish!

    The military failure of terrorist asymmetrical warfare is a fact of 20th century wars (WWII, Korea, VietNam, Iraq2, Chechnya, Intifada, each had participants who tried it and suffered for it). It is a tactic that has been successfully defeated multiple times at enormous cost to its perpetrators.

  32. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    When a nation suffers defeat in war and in this case not so much tactical defeat but strategic defeat fingers begin pointing and blame is apportioned.

    While the United States as a result of its massive asymmetrical advantages in the appliances of war could not be actually defeated on the battlefield it has once again experienced defeat in its strategic purposes. The spending of literally trillions of dollars and an effusion of blood has purchased the United States virtually nothing so somebody must be at fault. The U. S. military establishments custom is to take credit for only victories and never responsibility for defeats so a scapegoat must be found that does not wear a uniform.

  33. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery mewled: “The spending of literally trillions of dollars and an effusion of blood has purchased the United States virtually nothing so somebody must be at fault. “

    Yes somebody is at fault, your boy :Barack H Obama in his quest for ideological purity, he and your girl Hilary pissed away our opportunities in Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
    But more to the point Emery the fault lies in you personally because you endorse and vote for fools like Barack and Hilary.

  34. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Terrorism is not a concrete objective it is a ‘tactic’ and one cannot wage war against at tactic. It is akin to waging war against bad weather

    Nonsense. When one wages war, one develops tactics to counter other tactics. Terrorism has been defeated countless times.

  35. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery whinged; “The U. S. military establishments custom is to take credit for only victories and never responsibility for defeats so a scapegoat must be found that does not wear a uniform.”

    So the U.S. military is peopled by cowards, blackguards and knaves? Really that’s you position?

    You’ve been living in the progressive bubble too long.

    A word of advice; the further outside the 494/694 beltway you go the more cautious you should be about spewing scurrilous bilge like that. Not everyone will show you the forbearance such a comment demands – hell you could end up looking like Harry Reid. As veteran Roman Legionnaires would advise new recruits in Germany “Don’t go into the woods”

  36. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    “What the Republicans want is a war with Iran–a war they think the US will easily win.”
    This is simply not true, Emery. Can you at least provide a link to a Republican who wants war with Iran? I am not a Republican (I am a conservative who is registered as an independent), and as far as I know what the R’s want is to put the screws on Iran, via sanctions, until they give up their dream of making a bomb and renounce their state sponsored terrorism. McCain is about as hawkish as Republican pols get. Does he want war with Iran? How about Cheney?

  37. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    More than a few commenters today should spend more time reading Clausewitz and less time stroking your keyboard.

    Pushing around or displacing insurgents is like putting a block of salt into bucket of water.The water (insurgents) doesn’t go away it merely temporarily moves to new locations and in the meantime the salt dissolves and water assumes its original position.

    When it comes to our celebrating our tactical prowess it seems that for many in the military the ‘appearance’ of tactical proficiency has become more important than its actual contribution to the achieving of war aims.

    Tactically our coaches had superior skill, our ground game made more first downs, our pass completion rate was better, our blocking was better and the quality of our dancing in the end zone the few times we were there was dramatically better. The only problem was that the other side while playing with virtually no equipment scored the most points.

  38. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery cot up on his hind legs and trumpeted: ” The only problem was that the other side while playing with virtually no equipment scored the most points.”

    oh do name the instances you benighted troll.

  39. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Kel: I think one can make in the cause of brevity a few observations though many more come to mind:

    Firstly, the national security challenges that President’s have faced since the Second World War have gradually over time become far more haphazard, complex and difficult to analyze. Confronting the Soviet Union in most ways was a more dangerous but simpler problem to manage than today’s global chessboard of dysfunctional states and terrorism mixed with economics.

    Secondly, our tools to deal with these challenges have not really changed that much from the depths of the cold war. Indeed, we have become so perplexed about the nature and variety of challenges plaguing the world that we have yet to do a global ‘triage’ of those risks thus making those hard decisions as to where we can make a realistic difference and where we can’t.

    Thirdly, without doing that triage the construction of a comprehensive strategy is impossible and without such a strategy we are merely swimming against the tide.

    Fourthly, the GWOT as it now stands is nothing more than a garbage heap of panic and hysteria passing itself off as policy and provides nothing in the way of innovative ideas and guidance that can assist both the foreign policy and military establishments.

    Lastly, going forward new Presidents need to drop the zero-sum game of winner takes all approach and begin replacing the partisan way we construct foreign policy in favor of forming a coalition of experienced Democrats and Republicans at the NSA and Cabinet level much as FDR did. We are ‘the’ great power but the way we handle our affairs overseas is much more akin to an high school adolescent’s posturing and abrupt behavior.

    However, the American public, even elements on the right, are not amused with how the military has been so futility used since 2001. They are rightly perplexed by how such a powerful force can expend so much blood, energy and money for so little if any gain. To give the military their head I no longer think is an option any longer for the rest of Obama’s term.

    Also, after six years in office I think his comfort and trust in the military has not only decreased but he actually mistrusts them to do anything other than limited and restrictive operations such as JSOC does.

    This is partly because he recognizes that the armed forces officer corps is generally hostile to his political positioning. He is not going to allow himself to be maneuvered into policies that emanate from such an antagonistic entity.

    As I recall Jack Kennedy came out of the Pacific War with a very jaundiced view of officer corps of the armed forces. He went into the Cuban missile crisis with that view (reinforced by the Bay of Pigs) and he was fortunate that he did.

    He then experimented with their advice in Viet Nam and launched the biggest tragedy of the 20th Century for this country. I would suspect Obama is familiar with time through his reading. If he isn’t he should be.

  40. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Emery, one of the more fascinating developments of the post-WWII world is the insistence by Lefties like yourself that we are no longer allowed to win wars. And it’s certainly true that we never will again if we continue to play by the Left’s rules of warfare. All we ever hear is how our response should be “proportionate” and “appropriate”, to which I say Bullshit! Either you fight a war and devastate your opponent, crushing their will to respond, or you don’t fight.

    To whit, Iraq was eminently winnable, depending on your definition of winning. The Kissinger faction would simply have appointed a tyrant of our choosing and left, declaring the threat over. W, however, was more kindhearted and decided to try and create a representative democracy there. What W underestimated was the tribalism of Iraq, and the fecklessness of The Lightworker, to whom scoring domestic political points by premature withdrawal was more important than improving the stability and long term prospects of the Mideast.

    You’re right, we can continue to shine light on the cockroaches and watch them scurry away, and that’s just what Obama’s doing. That’s a prescription for losing in the long term. Or we can restrict the sphere in which cockroaches operate by creating atmospheres which are poisonous to them: either successful, liberal societies (very hard if we’re not in it for the long term, and impossible with leaders like Obama), or by supporting despots who won’t tolerate cockroaches polluting their realms and will crush them. We tried the first, the American people tired of war, elected feckless leftists, and now we’ve failed to be humane so all that’s left is the cynical Kissinger strategy. That folks like you have condemned the region to backward brutality either by folks of our choosing or Iran’s is cruel, immoral, and inhumane.

  41. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery,
    as to your first point; agreed Obama is not capable of analyzing and building a coherent foreign policy
    to you second point; sadly our tools have changed from a dependance on HumInt to a bewildering fascination with technology
    to your third point; a competent president would not wait for “someone” to do the triage he would undertake it forthwith and not relegate it to the traveling Clinton carny show or “Do you know who I am” Kerry
    to your fourth point; agreed the GWOT (in all its incarnations since ford/carter) is an expensive boondoggle maintained like the WOD for political expediency
    to your (almost) last point; if we were running a zero-sum game we would have stripped both Iraq and Afghanistan bare, we’d have an occuping army in Iraq running the oil concession and we would have auctioned off the (very substantial) mineral rights to Afghanistan to the highest bidder – also we would have sprayed agent orange on all the poppy fields
    to your final point, Obama doesn’t trust the military because they rightly refuse to become agents/enforcers of his partisan agenda
    and finally Nixon shared Kennedy’s view of the officer corps which is why he ended the draft – the volunteer officer is always more reliable than the conscript.

  42. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    So, no Republicans who want war with Iran? Guess that canard can go away.
    As bad as the tragedy of Vietnam was for this country, it was much, much worse for the Vietnamese and the Cambodians. If only it had ended up like Korea! Of course, that success was the model we had to go by in the 1960s.
    If you want a bipartisan foreign policy, you should talk to the Democrats, not the Republicans. A majority of Dem senators voted for the Iraq War resolution in October 2002. By 2006 virtually all of them had denounced the War and Bush. Also there was that thing where Clinton’s National Security Adviser (Sandy Berger) plead guilty to removing and destroying docs from the national archives before his testimony to the 9/11 commission.
    But hey, gotta watch out for those Republican Hawks who do not say that they want war with Iran. Just keep repeating “Cheney . . . Halliburton” and it all becomes crystal clear.

  43. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Well, if anyone gets too far out of line we’ll get Republican Senators to write them a good stiff letter!

  44. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    On another tack, the results of this poll are being trumpeted by the usual suspects: http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1167a1IranandIsrael.pdf
    Note that exactly the same percentage of Americans approve of a generic “nuclear deal with Iran” as are not confident the deal would actually prevent Iran from getting nukes. This is shitty leadership from the Current Occupant. No alternative option (like cranking up sanctions further) has been forthcoming from Obama or Kerry. You can’t blame the GOP for this, apparently the Obama-friendly media has actually convinced gullible people that the GOP alternative is war with Iran.

  45. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    kel wrote: “As veteran Roman Legionnaires would advise new recruits in Germany “Don’t go into the woods”.

    /Back in the good old days A.D. 16 to be exact, Tiberius called off a long series of reprisal offensives across the Rhine against the German tribes the Cherusci, the Arminius and the Marcomannic.

    The cause of those reprisals was the ambush and destruction of three Legions (XVII, XVII, and XIX) under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the dense swampy Teutoberg Forest.

    Varus was not a general but a lawyer and administrator sent to organize the taxation of the eastern Rhine frontier and led his three Legion escort into a well-planned trap.

    The Romans by nature were a people disinclined to whine or ring hands and took their revenge in a series of bloody campaigns against the German tribes over seven years. Tiberius inherited these campaigns from Augustus and while they killed a lot Germans they were still expensive and disrupted many other Roman diplomatic priorities.

    Tiberius may have been colossally sexually predatory with women but he was also a highly intelligent strategist and superb general. After succeeding Augustus in A. D. 14 he developed a new strategy of leaving the German tribes to themselves and sealing the Rhine frontier upon its western bank.

    As soon as the Roman threat was removed the tribes returned to their natural state of butchering one another. This allowed the Romans to construct a series of client Kingdoms from the lower Rhine to the middle Danube in order to quarantine the brawling Germans into their cold dark dripping forests.

    The Roman Legions and their auxiliaries were then able to perform the function of a mobile reserve to corral and defeat any attempts by the German to leave the quarantine area./

    Perhaps there is something here to learn?

    The military problem inherent in all efforts such as this is defined by an old military maximum that goes like this:

    Think of your enemy as a handkerchief thrown into the air. Think of our response as a hammer. The hammer can repeatedly strike the handkerchief but merely bends it’s shape and moves it about with little if any damage. What is needed behind the handkerchief is an anvil that the hammer can strike and tear the handkerchief to shreds. Frankly, I know of no such anvil available to our hammer.

    The risks of ISIS in my humble view are being dramatically over blown by domestic political forces thus forcing Obama to respond less to the ISIS threat than to a domestic political impulse requiring attention.

    ISIS contains the seeds of its own eventual destruction. It is an alliance of unstable self-interested tribal groupings. That condition in the Middle East has always led to eventual fratricide as factions seek advantage of one over the other.

    The best the US and its western allies can do is not the direct waging of war against ISIS but taking a page out of the Romans book of strategy and quarantine the infection to prevent its further metastasizing deeper beyond the region. If air strikes make us feel better and are good TV that’s fine but they will be little more than theater.

  46. kel Avatar
    kel

    emery;
    agreed, you are correct to point out that Obama lacks the leadership, courage, political will, and most important the intelligence necessary to deal effectively with ISIS so “The best the US and its western allies can do is not the direct waging of war against ISIS but taking a page out of the Romans book of strategy and quarantine the infection to prevent its further metastasizing deeper beyond the region.” No wonder he doesn’t want a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office – it invites comparisons he is not willing to endure.

  47. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    The biggest problem with your Roman analogy, Emery, is that in the 1st century it was possible to economically isolate the Roman Empire from the hinterlands. Can’t do that in 2015, not without imposing restrictions on immigration and restrictions on free trade.
    The stakes are high. There are nine billion people in the world. They are dependent on free trade. If a nuke were to obliterate a major Western city, it might kill a few hundred thousand or a few million. The ten percent drop in world GDP that would result might kill a billion people.

  48. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Here’s how you can tell a Liberal: they cannot employ reason, only emotion.

    Liberal: I say A.
    Conservative: I don’t believe it. Prove it.
    Liberal: I say B.
    Conservative: That has noting to do with A, that’s a completely different claim.
    Liberal: I say C.
    Conservative: What the hell are you talking about?

  49. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    PM: In a world where there are no guarantees that you are firmly under the US or the USSR’s nuclear umbrella, there are any number of countries that desire the assurance of nuclear weapons. Take Saudi Arabia: In the best of all possible worlds, Iran is going to publicly abandon their quest for nuclear weapons, but will still coyly hint that they will never be more than a year or two from having them from this point on. Saudi Arabia will almost certainly feel the need to have the same capability, or a greater one. I would be shocked if the Saudis are not actively pursuing or purchasing nuclear technology today.

    So I don’t think Iran having a few bombs changes anything because I think that proliferation is inevitable and unavoidable, no matter the outcome in Iran. In the end, nobody wants to be Quaddafi, murdered in a sewer pipe because he lacked a deterrent to NATO.

  50. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Emery,

    Your big about the Roman response to the Teutuburger Wald – about which I researched and wrote in great depth in college – doesn’t undercut my point.

1 2
Newer Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.