TenuredVulture wrote:

td11 wrote:It's as if he's dealing with completely unpredictable and insane opponents like Isis and Putin and Assad

I'd concede on Isis, but Putin and Assad have acted in pretty rational and predictable ways.

TenuredVulture wrote:

td11 wrote:It's as if he's dealing with completely unpredictable and insane opponents like Isis and Putin and Assad

I'd concede on Isis, but Putin and Assad have acted in pretty rational and predictable ways.

TenuredVulture wrote:Their goal is to stay in power. Understood through that lens, what they've done is in fact rational. (Hint--one way to tell is that they're still in power, and there's no real prospect of them being tossed out.)

pacino wrote:
a guy waiting for his kids to come out of daycare

swishnicholson wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Their goal is to stay in power. Understood through that lens, what they've done is in fact rational. (Hint--one way to tell is that they're still in power, and there's no real prospect of them being tossed out.)

Right, but another way to classify that sort of action is simple. We could have backed Assad from the beginning in Syria and helped maintain a strong central government there. We could have maintained a large military force in Iraq and a stronger role in dictating government policy. Both those things would have certainly helped keep the lid on Isis and at the very least allowed us to react more quickly to its threat. That's rational if you want hegemony in the Middle East, which has its advantages. But not if you'd rather not support a murderous autocrat in Syria or entangle the US in an ongoing fight in Iraq. I support both those things, but they do necessitate policy in the area being much more complicated, nuanced and subject to ongoing events,as does any policy that doesn't include either assertion of American control or a total hands off policy.

I'm happy to the strategy to be still developing. Those who are not should have the guts to spell out what they would like to do, since it involves some very hard choices.

SK790 wrote:Hell freezes over as Rep. Tom Cole agrees with the BSG leftist cabal

peter king wrote:There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said of President Obama on NewsMaxTV. “When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out – I’m not trying to be trivial here – in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he’s trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy.

pacino wrote:

peter king wrote:There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said of President Obama on NewsMaxTV. “When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out – I’m not trying to be trivial here – in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he’s trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy.

pacino wrote:the question is why ARE they saying this stuff? it's tough talk to the public and to ISIS, pretty simple. perhaps they are also war hawks, like yourself.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S acknowledgment that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with reporters Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president’s goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days.

This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels.

The first has to do with simple competence. One can only imagine the whiplash that foreign leaders must be suffering. They heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power denounce Russia as “today . . . they open a new front . . . Russia’s force along the border is the largest it has been . . . the mask is coming off.” An hour later, Mr. Obama implicitly contradicted her: “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now . . . it’s not really a shift.”

Similarly, his senior advisers uniformly have warned of the unprecedented threat to America and Americans represented by Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq. But Mr. Obama didn’t seem to agree. “Now, ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] poses an immediate threat to the people of Iraq and to people throughout the region,” he said. “My priority at this point is to make sure that the gains that ISIL made in Iraq are rolled back.” Contrast that ambition with this vow from Secretary of State John F. Kerry: “And make no mistake: We will continue to confront ISIL wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred. The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil.”

The discrepancies raise the question of whether Mr. Obama controls his own administration, but that’s not the most disturbing element. His advisers are only stating the obvious: Russia has invaded Ukraine. The Islamic State and the Americans it is training are a danger to the United States. When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says the threat they pose is “in some ways . . . more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” it’s not because he is a warmonger or an alarmist. He’s describing the world as he sees it. When Mr. Obama refuses to acknowledge the reality, allies naturally wonder whether he will also refuse to respond to it.

Which is, in the end, the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Obama’s performance. Throughout his presidency, he has excelled at explaining what the United States cannot do and cannot afford, and his remarks Thursday were no exception. “Ukraine is not a member of NATO,” he said. “We don’t have those treaty obligations with Ukraine.” If Iraq doesn’t form an acceptable government, it’s “unrealistic” to think the United States can defeat the Islamic State.

Allies are vital; the United States overstretched in the Bush years; it can’t solve every problem. All true. But it’s also true that none of the basic challenges to world order can be met without U.S. leadership: not Russia’s aggression, not the Islamic State’s expansion, not Iran’s nuclear ambition nor China’s territorial bullying. Each demands a different policy response, with military action and deterrence only two tools in a basket that includes diplomatic and economic measures. It’s time Mr. Obama started emphasizing what the United States can do instead of what it cannot.

pacino wrote:
a guy waiting for his kids to come out of daycare