There are those who believe Obama is naive and his indifference reflects confusion about what to do because he is in over his head.
I once thought that was the case but no longer.
If Republicans fund his latest request they deserve to be thrown out of office.. Allow Democrats to be in charge and let the country, along with its porous borders, go down the drain, as it surely will..
It is time Boehner stood up and be counted on for smart leadership. Boehner can bring all the law suits he wishes and if they fail, as there is a strong likelihood they will, then members of his party should throw him out as well.
When people ask Republicans for a plan to put a cracked American Humpty Dumpty back on the wall it is like asking a doctor what do you plan to do and blaming him for a patient who smoked and has lung cancer. Republicans cannot solve the problems this radical president has created because they cannot trust him and because he is a liar of the first magnitude.
Obama has no interest in solving problems, only creating them so he can blame others.
The best thing Republicans can do is explain the dilemma Obama and Harry Reid has placed the nation in and ask them for their vote so Republicans can block this president from implementing more chaos and allow the next two years to pass.
If Republicans lose because they cannot articulate a clear message by replaying Obama's previous speeches and let all see how Obama has disavowed everything he promised, Republicans, like Romney, have only themselves to blame. Also, Republicans should highlight Obama's most recent trip to Texas and Colorado, where he played pool, raised campaign money and could not go to the border to witness the mess he created. If voters are incapable of grasping the serious of what damage Obama has created then they too deserve the consequences of their inability to take their heads out of the sand.
We are living through a nightmare created by a cynical president bent on changing America beyond recognition. I am no longer buying Obama is naive. Obama, The Nobel Nudnick, is purposeful and therefore a menace.
Obama has vowed to shrink our nation's footprint. Meanwhile, China is challenging our presence in the Pacific, radical Islamists are effectively challenging us in the Middle East, Putin is reasserting what he believes is Russia's destiny to gain warm water port access and our president plays golf and pouts about how Republicans are his enemy.
Obama's withdrawal approach has created vacuums which have been filled by those who mean us and the West nothing good and I venture to say we are on the verge of another world war. (See 1 below.)
Meanwhile, Obama criticizes Israel for defending its borders and citizens. This from a pitiful president who has no desire to protect our borders but is only interested in blaming the governors whose states are being invaded. (See 1a below.)
What a tragedy and you can lay it at the foot of affirmative action, a desire to prove we are no longer prejudiced against those of color and were willing to buy a pig in a poke who had a resume so thin you could see through it but voters were blinded by the shine of Obama's cool persona and toothy disingenuous smile.
I hate to admit it but I am beginning to think Rhett Bultler was right when he said
"Frankly Scarlet I Don't Give A Damn!" (See 1b and 1c below.)
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Show me a moderate Fatah Palestinian and I will show you another terrorist. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Obama the detached president watches while the world becomes unhinged. (See 3 below.)
If you want more of the same vote for Hillary should she run. (See 3a below.)
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Three youngest grandchildren and their families coming in, starting Saturday, along with Lynn's brother and wife and two first cousins. Off for our 37th annual Tybee vacation so no more e mails for a while after this one. Have a great week and , once again, I offer you a reprieve and hope the world does not fall apart before I return to the post!
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Dick
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1) Have We Gone From a Post-War to a Pre-War World?
By Walter Russell Mead
On June 28, 1914, a chauffeur panicked after a failed bomb attack on his boss, took a wrong turn and came to a complete stop in front of a café in Sarajevo where Gavrilo Princip was sitting. Princip, discouraged at the apparent failure of the planned murder, seized the unexpected opportunity and fired the shots that began the First World War, a cataclysm which claimed over nine million lives, ended four empires and set in motion events from the Communist Revolution in Russia to the rise of Nazi Germany.
One hundred years later, the world is nervously keeping its eyes peeled for misguided chauffeurs and asking itself whether history could repeat. The great powers are at peace, and trade and cultural ties between nations seem closer than ever before, yet the international scene is in many ways surprisingly brittle. In particular, a rising naval power is challenging an established hegemon, and a "powder keg" region replete with ethnic and religious quarrels looks less stable by the day.
In 1914, Germany was the rising power, the U.K. the weary hegemon and the Balkans was the powder keg. In 2014, China is rising, the United States is staggering under the burden of world leadership and the Middle East is the powder keg.
Only a few years ago, most western observers believed that the age of geopolitical rivalry and great power war was over. Today, with Russian forces in Ukraine, religious wars exploding across the Middle East, and territorial disputes leading to one crisis after another in the East and South China seas, the outlook is darker. Serious people now ask whether we have moved from a post-war into a pre-war world. Could some incident somewhere in the world spark another global war?
MIDDLE EAST POWDER KEG
Let's start with the powder keg. The immediate cause of the fighting in World War I was the set of ethnic and religious conflicts in the Balkans. In the second half of the 19th century, economic development and modernization led to heightened competition among the region's peoples. The drive for self-determination set Croats, Serbs, Magyars, Kosovars, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Greeks and others at one another's throats. The death toll mounted and the hatred grew as massacres and ethnic cleansing spread -- and the ability of the outside powers to control the region's dynamics shrank as the imperial powers were themselves undermined by rising social and nationalist tensions.
The Middle East today bears an ominous resemblance to the Balkans of that period. The contemporary Middle East has an unstable blend of ethnicities and religions uneasily coexisting within boundaries arbitrarily marked off by external empires. Ninety-five years after the French and the British first parceled out the lands of the fallen Ottoman caliphate, that arrangement is now coming to an end. Events in Iraq and Syria suggest that the Middle East could be in for carnage and upheaval as great as anything the Balkans saw. The great powers are losing the ability to hold their clients in check; the Middle East today is at least as explosive as the Balkan region was a century ago.
GERMANS THEN, CHINESE NOW
What blew the Archduke's murder up into a catastrophic world war, though, was not the tribal struggle in southeastern Europe. It took the hegemonic ambitions of the German Empire to turn a local conflict into a universal conflagration. Having eclipsed France as the dominant military power in Europe, Germany aimed to surpass Britain on the seas and to recast the emerging world order along lines that better suited it. Yet the rising power was also insecure, fearing that worried neighbors would gang up against it. In the crisis in the Balkans, Germany both felt a need to back its weak ally Austria and saw a chance to deal with its opponents on favorable terms.
Could something like that happen again? China today is both rising and turning to the sea in ways that Kaiser Wilhelm would understand. Like Germany in 1914, China has emerged in the last 30 years as a major economic power, and it has chosen to invest a growing share of its growing wealth in military spending.
But here the analogy begins to get complicated and even breaks down a bit. Neither China nor any Chinese ally is competing directly with the United States and its allies in the Middle East. China isn't (yet) taking a side in the Sunni-Shia dispute, and all it really wants in the Middle East is quiet; China wants that oil to flow as peacefully and cheaply as possible.
AMERICA HAS ALL THE ALLIES
And there's another difference: alliance systems. The Great Powers of 1914 were divided into two roughly equal military blocs: Austria, Germany, Italy and potentially the Ottoman Empire confronted Russia, France and potentially Britain.
And there's another difference: alliance systems. The Great Powers of 1914 were divided into two roughly equal military blocs: Austria, Germany, Italy and potentially the Ottoman Empire confronted Russia, France and potentially Britain.
"Today the global U.S. alliance system has no rival or peer; while China, Russia and a handful of lesser powers are disengaged from, and in some cases even hostile to, the U.S. system, the military balance isn't even close."
Today the global U.S. alliance system has no rival or peer; while China, Russia and a handful of lesser powers are disengaged from, and in some cases even hostile to, the U.S. system, the military balance isn't even close.
While crises between China and U.S. allies on its periphery like the Philippines could escalate into US-China crises, we don't have anything comparable to the complex and finely balanced international system at the time of World War I. Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia and as a direct result of that Germany attacked Belgium. It's hard to see how, for example, a Turkish attack on Syria could cause China to attack Vietnam. Today's crises are simpler, more direct and more easily controlled by the top powers.
On the other hand, the Middle East's supplies of oil will keep China, as well as other powers, more involved in events there than geography would suggest. The Balkans had no products in 1914 that the rest of the world much cared about; the Middle East looms much larger in the global economy than the Balkan peninsula ever has. Already, countries including Russia and Iran have been involving themselves in Iraq. If the slide into regional chaos continues and countries like China and Japan believe that direct action is needed to secure their oil supplies, almost anything could happen in a few years.
ASIA IN 2014 IS NOT EUROPE IN 1914
Furthermore, the geopolitical situation of Xi's China is more different from that of Wilhelm's Germany than many observers realize. While it is true that many of the same forces that drove Germany toward war 100 years ago are present in China today (especially a public mood of nationalism and an aggressive military psychology among some of the armed forces leadership), there are differences as well.
Furthermore, the geopolitical situation of Xi's China is more different from that of Wilhelm's Germany than many observers realize. While it is true that many of the same forces that drove Germany toward war 100 years ago are present in China today (especially a public mood of nationalism and an aggressive military psychology among some of the armed forces leadership), there are differences as well.
In 1914, Germany was a rising empire surrounded by powers who were, and who felt themselves to be, in decline: Russia, Austria-Hungary, Britain, the Ottoman Empire and France all felt themselves to be in decline. China's neighbors today are growing China militarily and economically: South Korea, Australia, India, and the nations of South-East Asia. Germany's growing preponderance in Europe was tipping the balance of power toward instability. It's not yet clear that something like that will or can happen in Asia.
Besides the Germany/China parallel, there is the question of whether the U.S. today is beginning to resemble Great Britain. In 1914, Britain was the only global superpower in the sense that nobody had an empire as large, played as important a role in managing the world financial system, or provided the same kind of political and military security to the international system, but many in Britain were beginning to think that its best days were behind it.
By 1914, both the U.S. and Germany had passed Britain in economic terms, and internal political paralysis was turning the country inward. (The political struggles that would result in the partition of Ireland had much of the British army in a state approaching mutiny in the months before Sarajevo.)
A small but significant number of historians blame Great Britain, as well as Germany, for the outbreak of that conflict. France was the bitterest and most committed of Germany's enemies, but Germany (then Prussia) had beaten her soundly in the Franco-Prussian War one generation previously. France's ally Russia was a formidable power on paper, but the Japanese had savaged the Russians in the past decade, and a wave of revolutionary agitation nearly brought the Tsarist system to its knees.
Germany didn't think a war against those two powers would be a cakewalk, but Wilhelm and many of his advisors thought that Britain would stay out of any war over Serbia. The Kaiser, some argue, would probably have thought twice had he known that he would be fighting the full weight of Britain and her Empire. If the British had made clear to the Germans that they would stand by Russia and France, it is possible that German diplomacy in the fateful month of July 1914 would have reined in Austria-Hungary rather than egging it on.
AMERICA IN 2014 IS NOT QUITE BRITAIN IN 1914
Despite worries about the rise of China, the place of the United States at the pinnacle of world power is more secure today than Britain's was 100 years ago. The U.S. economy is a larger share of GDP, the U.S. military advantage is qualitatively greater than anything Britain ever enjoyed, and none of its political problems are as polarizing as the Irish question or the rise of a socialist working class party were for the U.K. in 1914.
Despite worries about the rise of China, the place of the United States at the pinnacle of world power is more secure today than Britain's was 100 years ago. The U.S. economy is a larger share of GDP, the U.S. military advantage is qualitatively greater than anything Britain ever enjoyed, and none of its political problems are as polarizing as the Irish question or the rise of a socialist working class party were for the U.K. in 1914.
Even so, it is possible that other powers may not be sure how committed the United States is to defending its allies or its interests around the world, and that can make bold or even rash moves look attractive.
It's possible, for example, that some people in the Chinese leadership look at President Obama's mixed messages about his "red lines" in Syria and wonder how seriously to take American red lines in the Pacific. Would the U.S. really go to war over a handful of uninhabited rocks scattered through the East and South China seas? Would we take stronger steps against an invasion of Taiwan than we have against Russia's conquest of the Crimea? Russia and Iran may be asking themselves similar questions and looking for places where they can push against what they see as weak spots in the U.S. alliance system. At the same time, countries that depend on U.S. guarantees (like Israel and Japan) may become more aggressive to deter potential adversaries.
RAILROADS THEN, DIGITAL NETWORKS AND DRONES NOW
There was one more factor that contributed to the outbreak of World War I: technological change introduced new factors into warfare that policymakers failed to understand. A driving force in the tragedy of 1914 was the impact that mobilization timetables had on diplomatic and military choices.
There was one more factor that contributed to the outbreak of World War I: technological change introduced new factors into warfare that policymakers failed to understand. A driving force in the tragedy of 1914 was the impact that mobilization timetables had on diplomatic and military choices.
The development of national railroad networks in the 19th century allowed countries to call up reserves and mobilize their forces for war on an unprecedented scale. On the other hand, once your neighbor began to mobilize, you had to move yourself; otherwise, your armies would still be scattered while your neighbor had a large and powerful force on the frontier. Russia had the largest armies, but the size of its territory and the relatively backward state of its railroad network meant that it had to mobilize early in a crisis or risk being caught unprepared. But once Russia began to mobilize, Germany could not delay its own move much longer, and German mobilization forced France's hand. Few European policymakers on the day of Franz Ferdinand's death understood how railroad timetables would force their hands in the weeks ahead.
"'Few European policymakers on the day of Franz Ferdinand's death understood how railroad timetables would force their hands in the weeks ahead."
Today the disruptive effect of technological change is greater than ever. New weapons systems emerge (like drones) that transform the balance of power and set off new and unpredictable arms races. As information technology transforms the battlefield, tech itself becomes a battleground in a new era in war. Disrupting the enemy's communications, attacking its information systems (through viruses, attacks on communications satellites and EMPs for example) and otherwise wreaking havoc in cyberspace is a new frontier in war which nobody really understands.
The rapid pace of technological change makes it harder for policymakers to assess the strength of their opponents even as it puts them under pressure to speed their deliberations in a time of crisis. No one wants to be the victim of a cyberspace version of Pearl Harbor, so leaders may feel forced to accelerate the move toward war before suffering a devastating attack.
Technological change had another, deeper role in the making of World War I. The unprecedented social shifts that accompanied the Industrial Revolution had a lot to do with the shifts in the balance of power and the rise of ideologies like nationalism and socialism that made the period so turbulent. We are certainly seeing that again today; globalization put societies all over the world under stress, and that stress often results in the rise of nationalist and even chauvinist political movements in some countries and religious fanaticism in others.
DON'T FORGET ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS
One more factor needs to be noted. The existence of nuclear weapons has changed the terms on which great powers engage. In 1914, nations could still hurl everything they had at one another in a struggle to the death; nuclear weapons change that dynamic. No major war can be as politically straightforward as war traditionally has been; the prospect of nuclear escalation will inhibit both sides in future crises as it did the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War.
One more factor needs to be noted. The existence of nuclear weapons has changed the terms on which great powers engage. In 1914, nations could still hurl everything they had at one another in a struggle to the death; nuclear weapons change that dynamic. No major war can be as politically straightforward as war traditionally has been; the prospect of nuclear escalation will inhibit both sides in future crises as it did the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War.
NOT THE SAME, BUT ALSO NOT SO DIFFERENT
History, perhaps unfortunately, can't give us a clear answer to the question of whether we face anything like another Great War. Looking into the rear view mirror can only tell you so much about the conditions ahead. Our situation today is different enough from that of a century ago to make renewed great power war much less than a certainty, but there are enough troubling similarities that we can't rule the prospect out.
History, perhaps unfortunately, can't give us a clear answer to the question of whether we face anything like another Great War. Looking into the rear view mirror can only tell you so much about the conditions ahead. Our situation today is different enough from that of a century ago to make renewed great power war much less than a certainty, but there are enough troubling similarities that we can't rule the prospect out.
The one thing we can say with certainty about the 21st century is this: peaceful or war-torn, it isn't going to be boring.
1a)Before border crisis peaked, Texas governor warned Obama administration
1a)Before border crisis peaked, Texas governor warned Obama administration
The GOP says Obama has ignored other warnings about the crisis. OnMSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” on Wednesday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said his office has evidence that the administration has known about the latest surge of minors since January. Obama ordered a broad interagency response in mid-May, after receiving a briefing from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said during a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday that his agency did not get involved in helping manage the government’s response at the border until May.
“Although we’ve made progress, we’ve often been interrupted by the influx of kids happening faster than we can discharge them,” he told lawmakers. Fugate said the government made a “massive” effort over the weekend to take children under 5 years old out of the custody of the Border Patrol and place them in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Perry — widely viewed as a potential 2016 presidential candidate — says he never received a response to his 2012 letter and has denounced Obama for failing to act sooner. He has declared in a round of interviews that Obama is complicit in the problem, even offering a conspiracy theory that the president created the crisis on purpose.
“I have to believe that when you do not respond in any way, that you are either inept, or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from,” Perry said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
White House officials dismiss Perry’s criticism and said the administration did respond to the governor over his 2012 concerns. A senior administration official said federal officials briefed the governor’s staff more than once on the administration’s efforts to deal with border security after receiving the letter.
This official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said Perry later acknowledged the briefings in a followup letter. The official emphasized that the governor, in his first letter, did not ask the administration for anything in particular and offered no solutions of his own.
Furthermore, the administration official said, the number of minors at the border, while growing in 2012, was a small fraction of what border patrol agents are seeing this year.
“The briefs [to Perry’s office] were intended to give them a clear understanding that the administration and DHS and others were aware of the fact that this was a situation emerging with unaccompanied children, and that we were taking steps to deal with the situation,” the official said.
Ray Sullivan, Perry’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2011, said the governor has “sounded the alarm” bells on immigration with both the Bush and Obama administrations. He said Perry met Obama on the tarmac in El Paso in 2010 and attempted to give him a letter about the immigration situation and his ideas on how to bolster security.
“The president wouldn’t even take it. He told him to give it to Valerie Jarrett, who was standing behind him,” Sullivan said. “Needless to say there are light years of distance between the current administration and the Perry administration.”
By May 2012, Perry’s relationship with the Obama White House was at a low point. He had dropped out of the GOP presidential nomination race, during which he was very critical of the president. The year before, Perry ripped Obama for being slow to provide Texas with emergency funding to combat wildfires, and Obama mocked the governor over his denials about the effects of climate change.
Steve Atkiss, a former George W. Bush administration official who worked in the Office of Customs and Border Protection, said Perry has long taken an antagonistic tone toward the federal government on border issues. Part of the reason, Atkiss suggested, is because such a posture plays well politically in Texas, which has traditionally valued states’ rights over the federal role.
Of the four Southwest border state governors at the time — California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), New Mexico’s Bill Richardson (D), Arizona’s Janet Napolitano (D) and Perry — Perry was the most combative, Atkiss said.
“Here was a Republican from Texas as president, and the most difficult governor to have a completely straightfoward conversation with was Rick Perry,” said Atkiss, now a member of Command Consulting Group, a security firm in Washington. “It just sells in Texas to criticize the federal government and their performance on the border.”
Atkiss acknowledged that Perry raised legitimate points in his letter to Obama. “I’ve always been a true believer that historically our federal effort to defend the border has been dramatically under-resourced,” he said.
Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol Council, which represents thousands of federal agents, said the administration ignored repeated warnings from agents about the growing crisis. In 2012, Judd said, the Border Patrol began seeing a shift in illegal activity and border crossings away from the traditional hotspots from Tucson in Arizona to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
Agency managers shifted some resources, including more agents, to address the problem but did little to address the specific problem of a growing influx of minors from Central America, especially Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The number of minors from those countries apprehended at the border rose from 3,933 in 2011 to 10,146 in 2012 to 20,805 in 2013, according to federal data.
“All politicians grandstand, but the fact remains that what Perry put in his letter is exactly what happened,” Judd said. “And everybody ignored the problem until the media took the story. This influx didn’t just happen over the last three months. It started in 2012, grew worse in 2013 and got even worse in 2014.”
Katie Zezima contributed to this report
1b) Obama's Narcissistic Delusions about Peace in the Mideast
Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl recently observed, “The Obama administration has developed a bad habit of founding its Middle East strategies on wishful thinking.” “Wishful thinking” is kind. Delusions of grandeur from the man who promised he had the power to make oceans recede, the authority to bring prosperity and equality to all, and the unique ability to cause peace the world over is more accurate.
And so it is that Obama took to the pages of Ha’aretz, Israel’s equivalent of the New York Times (if not worse) in its left-leaning, progressive ideology and penned an article titled “Peace is the only path to true security for Israel and the Palestinians.” In typical Obama style, he narcissistically begins his column talking about himself -- his view of Israel from the window of Air Force One, his view of the situation as a father, and faux promises of his commitment to the security of Israel and its citizens. He continues with lies about the strength of the Israeli/U.S. relationship and his personal responsibility for making Israel safer than ever before. From there his delusions grow tenfold.
- “Our commitment to Israel’s security also extends to our engagement throughout the Middle East.” This is beautiful coming from the president who, from the very beginning of his term, promised to withdraw from the region and pivot to Asia. Back to reality, the last time Israel saw itself confronting the real possibility of war on at least four fronts was probably 1973. Under Obama’s “leadership,” Iraq has now become a terrorist safe-haven with one third of the country in the hands of ISIS which has also taken hold in Syria and threatens Jordan. Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons capability. The only thing that Obama’s engagement in the area has achieved is the empowerment of Palestinians to start a third intifada.
- “Under American leadership, the international community successfully removed the last of Bashar al-Assad’s declared chemical weapons from Syria.” The emphasis is mine making this statement simply laughable. As he continues claiming that this “reduces the ability of a brutal dictator to use weapons of mass destruction to threaten not just the Syrian people but Syria’s neighbors,” I imagine the 150-200,000 murdered Syrians turning over in their mass graves. Obama goes on to promise to continue working with “our partners in Europe and the Arab world to support the moderate opposition and to press for a political solution.” He just fails to disclose that three years of leading from behind has decimated any moderate opposition that could have prevented the expansion of ISIS from a minor al Qaeda offshoot to an international jihadist threat and that we are well beyond a political solution to the mess he helped to create.
- “We are also working to ensure that Iran does not ever possess a nuclear weapon.” Any respectable bookie would put the odds of success on this at 1,000,000 --1. He finishes that paragraph with a promise that every option remains on the table. I imagine the mullahs getting a nice chuckle out of that one; the Israelis, not so much.
- Finally we get to the crux of Obama’s sales pitch as he states, “We have always been clear-eyed that resolving the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would take enormous effort and require difficult decisions by the parties… peace is necessary, just, and possible.” This from the man who lied his way into the White House, forced ObamaCare down the throats of 300 million who do not want it, used the IRS to attack those he views as “dissidents,” and lied about a video causing the Benghazi attack. The only time Obama has been clear-eyed is when he uses Visine after a get-together with the Choom Gan
- But it is this line that is one of the most offensive: “Reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians would also help turn the tide of international sentiment and sideline violent extremists….” Where does one begin to address such distorted and historically inaccurate assertions? The international community has demonized Israel for decades. What is clear is that under Obama, it is America’s previously unequivocal support that has eroded and is no longer something that Israel can rely upon. As far as his accusation that it is solely within Israel’s power to “sideline” jihadists by simply making peace with the Palestinians, he not only ignores that they too are “violent extremists.” He makes the offensive assertion that Israel is responsible for the success of Islamic fundamentalists. That is simply absurd. But it is sadly not new. Members of his administration have been tying the peace process to the problems in the region since coming to power.
- “Palestinian children have hopes and dreams for their future and deserve to live with the dignity that can only come with a state of their own.” Alas, Palestinians were given Gaza and they turned it into Hamasistan. They teach their children to hate and kill Israelis from birth through suicide bombing. What planet is he living on to make these ridiculous pronouncements? Is there no one in the White House who understands that Palestinians will achieve dignity only when they start respecting the gift of life, not the promise of virgins in death?
- “And, in President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel.” Tell that to the families of the three Israeli teens who were just kidnapped and murdered. Abbas, the guy who formed a unity government with the Hamas terrorist organization is committed to a lot of things. But like Arafat before him, it is not peace.
- And what would an Obama comment on the situation be without the requisite “All parties must exercise restraint…” The moral equivalency argument is reprehensible.
Obama goes on to talk about the possibility of peace, the political will necessary to make it occur, and the willingness for both sides to take risks. He fails to mention all of the concessions Israel has made and ignores that the Palestinians made none. He bemoans the refusal to compromise or cooperate but ignores Israel’s 10-month hiatus on building in the disputed territories and the Palestinians’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Obama does promise that the United States will “do our part.” If I were an Israeli I would be screaming, “Nooooo!” At least until a new president enters the White House and for the sake of the survival of Western civilization, a Republican president. For the only way to defeat the forces of evil in this world is to acquire the strength to do so, project that strength, and have the will to use it to win the peace for which the world is searching. After five and a half years of Obama, evil is flourishing as the world’s barbarians recognize an America with no resolve to defeat them.
The good news is that no one listens to Barack Obama anymore. They may occasionally listen in for a good chuckle but no one takes him for his word, no one takes him seriously, and he has become a laughingstock the world over. So perhaps some of Ha’aretz’s progressive readers nodded a resounding “Yes we can” but the rest of us that are in fact clear-eyed won’t be saying “Amen” to anything Obama says unless it’s his resignation speech.
1c) Obama: I Can't Work With Others; Sue Me
In January, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for 2014. "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone," he said. The president planned on using his pen to sign executive and administrative orders and his phone to call outside groups -- not Congress -- to rally behind his pet programs.
1c) Obama: I Can't Work With Others; Sue Me
In January, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for 2014. "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone," he said. The president planned on using his pen to sign executive and administrative orders and his phone to call outside groups -- not Congress -- to rally behind his pet programs.
Obama forgot to mention his third favorite instrument -- the teleprompter. Rather than working with Congress, Obama's second term is all about blaming Congress for whatever goes wrong. In that can't-do spirit, Obama mocked House Speaker John Boehner's threat to take legal action against the White House's imperial ways. "So sue me," Obama said to laughter. As long as House Republicans are "doing nothing, I'm not going to apologize for trying to do something."
Pretend for a moment that George W. Bush had said that. Then imagine what Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would have said. But it's hard to imagine Bush crying uncle, because he was able to woo across the aisle, even to persuade Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to vote for the Iraq War.
Obama?
Obama?
"He throws out things he knows we won't go for," noted Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Then he grouses when the GOP won't go along.
In the "sue me" speech, Obama railed against the GOP for not supporting a minimum wage increase, paid family leave and pay equity for women -- despite his administration's sorry record in that department. Where Obama could garner bipartisan support -- approving the Keystone XL pipeline and ending the medical device tax and Obamacare's employer mandate -- Stewart added, he is not engaged.
The lawsuit, Boehner wrote in an opinion piece for CNN, would be aimed at Obama's failure at "faithfully (executing) the laws of our country." To wit, the president unilaterally has rewritten parts of his health care law and made recess appointments deemed illegal by the Supreme Court unanimously.
The administration's most well-known act of obstruction is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival directive. In essence, the president enacted the DREAM Act -- to stop the deportation of unlawful residents who came to the U.S. as minors -- without Congress.
(When Obama visits Texas for three fundraisers this week, he won't go to the border, where thousands of unaccompanied youths have been detained. Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, "The president has a very good sense of what's happening on the border." Translation: There's no opportunity to blame the GOP.)
Walter Olson of the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute told me that he likes some things the administration has done unilaterally but that the statutory authority may be "on thin ice." Olson also observed that after years of railing against activist courts, suit-happy Republicans don't quite have the high ground.
Neither does the can't-work-with-others president. As a constitutional law professor, Obama should not need the House Judiciary Committee to tell him, "If the President disagrees with that law, he must convince Congress to change it." Now he's arguing with himself -- gearing up to deport children, encouraged by his own directive.
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2)- "Moderate" Fatah Also Firing Rockets
by Khaled Abu Toameh
Fatah has several hundred militiamen in the Gaza Strip, some of whom are members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who continue to receive their salaries from Western governments.
At least two Fatah armed groups announced that they had started firingrockets at the "settlements" of Ashkelon and Sderot, cities inside the
pre-1967 borders of Israel, with another Fatah group claiming responsibility
for firing 35 rockets into Israel since Sunday.
So far as Abbas is concerned, "it all started when Israel fired back" in
response to hundred of rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during
the last few days. He seems concerned that if the world hears about the role
of Fatah in the rocket attacks, the news will affect Western financial aid
to the Palestinian Authority, which dominated by Fatah.
Palestinian Authority President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas on Monday
called for an "immediate cessation" of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza
Strip.
But Abbas stopped short of calling for an end to rocket attacks on Israel,
an omission of what triggered the current round of fighting.
Instead of calling on his partners in the "national consensus" government --
Hamas -- to stop their rocket attacks on Israel, Abbas appealed to the
international community to "intervene" to stop the Israeli "escalation."
So as far as Abbas is concerned, "it all started when Israel fired back" in
response to hundreds of rockets that were fired at Israel from the Gaza
Strip during the past few days.
Why did Abbas refrain from condemning or calling for an end to the rocket
attacks?
First, Abbas does not want to anger Hamas by issuing a condemnation of its
rocket attacks. Such a condemnation would certainly lead to the collapse of
the "reconciliation accord" that his Fatah faction signed with the Islamist
movement last April.
Second, condemning Hamas would be seen as an admission that the "national
consensus" government bears responsibility for the firing of rockets from
the Gaza Strip. After all, this is a Fatah-Hamas government, although its
ministers are described as "independent technocrats."
Third, Abbas is fully aware that the Palestinian public would not accept
such a condemnation, especially in the wake of increased tensions with
Israel in the aftermath of the kidnapping and murder of the Jerusalem
teenager, Mohamed Abu Khdeir.
Abbas is already facing a smear campaign waged by many Palestinians for
condemning the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West
Bank last month.
Photos depicting the embattled Abbas as a "Jewish rabbi" and "settler" have
been circulating on social media over the past few weeks.
Several senior Fatah officials have also joined the anti-Abbas campaign,
some openly calling for his removal from power for denouncing the murder of
the three Israeli youths and saying he would pursue security coordination
with Israel.
Fourth, Abbas is not willing to condemn the rocket attacks because his own
Fatah loyalists in the Gaza Strip are also participating in the fighting
against Israel.
Fatah has several hundred militiamen in the Gaza Strip who belong to various
armed groups. Some, according to sources in the Gaza Strip, are former
members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who continue to
receive their salaries from the Western-funded Palestinian government in
Ramallah.
Shortly after Israel launched air strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza
Strip on Monday, Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Aitah issued an urgent call to
his men to take part in "defending the Gaza Strip against Israeli
aggression."
Echoing the Fatah argument that "it all started when Israel fired back," the
spokesman accused Israel of "violating international laws" by targeting
terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Abu Aitah's call for joining the fight against Israel did not fall on deaf
ears. Within minutes, at least two Fatah armed groups announced that they
had started firing rockets at the "settlements" of Ashkelon and Sderot,
cities inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel.
One group, called Jaish al-Karamah [Army of Dignity], published a statement
entitled, "Gone are the Days of Defeat; Victory is Close."
The group even admitted that one of its "rocket units" had narrowly escaped
an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip.
Another Fatah group, called "Brigades of Martyr Abdel Qader Husseini - Armed
Wing of Fatah," also took credit for firing two rockets at Israeli towns and
cities.
A third Fatah group, called Jaish al-Asifah [Army of the Storm], distributed
leaflets in which its members claimed responsibility for launching 35
rockets at Israel since Sunday night.
The Fatah militiamen in the Gaza Strip were also acting at the request of
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who called on all Palestinian groups in the
Gaza Strip to close ranks in order to fight against the Israeli enemy.
The involvement of Fatah in the rocket attacks against Israel shows that the
"reconciliation" pact with Hamas is much more than a political partnership.
Obviously, Hamas and Fatah militiamen are working together on the ground to
carry out attacks against Israel.
What is happening in the Gaza Strip these days is not just another
confrontation between Israel and Hamas. It is a confrontation between Israel
on the one hand and Hamas and several armed groups, including Fatah, on the
other hand.
That is why Abbas finds it difficult to condemn the rocket attacks on
Israel. Such a move would put him on a collision course not only with Hamas,
but also with Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Movement and at
least 10 other jihadi cells operating in the Gaza Strip.
Moreover, Abbas seems to be concerned that if the world hears about the role
of Fatah in the rocket attacks, the news will affect Western financial aid
to his Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah.
2a) John Kerry’s War
Being a pessimist means that having your predictions come true rarely brings much joy. That’s the situation I and many other Israelis and Palestinians are in right now–all those who warned that John Kerry’s insistence on restarting Israeli-Palestinian talks would likely spark a new round of Palestinian-Israeli violence, but were drowned out by those who insist that talking never does any harm. It’s already too late to spare Israelis and Palestinians the bloody consequences of Kerry’s hubris. But it’s important to understand why such initiatives so frequently result in bloodshed, so that future secretaries of state can avoid a recurrence.
First, as repeated efforts over the last 14 years have shown, Palestinians and Israelis aren’t ready to make a deal. Serious efforts were made at the Camp David talks in 2000, the Taba talks in 2001, the Livni-Qureia talks in 2007-08, the Olmert-Abbas talks in 2008, and, most recently, Kerry’s talks, but all failed because the gaps between the parties couldn’t be bridged. As Shmuel Rosner noted in a perceptive New York Timesop-ed in May, that’s because many issues Westerners don’t much care about, and therefore imagine are easy to compromise on, are actually very important to the parties involved and thus impossible to compromise on. That isn’t likely to change anytime soon, and until it does, negotiations will never bring peace.
But failed peace talks inevitably make violence more likely, for two main reasons. First, they force both sides to focus on their most passionate disagreements–the so-called “core issues” that go to the heart of both Israeli and Palestinian identity–rather than on less emotional issues. On more mundane issues, Israel and the Palestinian Authority can sometimes agree–as they did on a series of economic cooperation projects last June, before Kerry’s peace talks gummed up the works. But even if they don’t, it’s hard for people on either side to get too upset when their governments squabble over, say, sewage treatment. In contrast, people on both sides do get upset when their governments argue over, say, the “right of return,” because that’s an issue where both sides view the other’s narrative as negating their own existence.
Second, failed peace talks always result in both sides feeling that they’ve lost or conceded something important without receiving a suitable quid pro quo. Palestinians, for instance, were outraged when Kerry reportedly backed Israel’s demand for recognition as a Jewish state, while Israelis were outraged by Kerry’s subsequent U-turn on the issue. Thus both sides ended up feeling as if their positions on this issue were undermined during the talks. The same goes for the Jordan Valley, where both Israelis and Palestinians felt Kerry’s proposals didn’t meet their respective needs, but now fear these proposals will serve as the starting point for additional concessions next time.
Added to this were the “gestures” Kerry demanded of both sides: that Israel free dozens of vicious killers and the PA temporarily refrain from joining international organizations. Though the price Kerry demanded of Israel was incomparably greater, neither side wanted to pay its assigned share. So when the talks collapsed, both felt they had made a sacrifice for nothing.
In short, failed peace talks exacerbate Israeli-Palestinian tensions rather than calming them. And when tensions rise, so does the likelihood of violence. That’s true in any situation, but doubly so for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because terrorist groups like Hamas are always happy to throw a match into a barrel of explosives. The unsurprising result is that spasms of violence, like the second intifada and the current war, have frequently followed failed peace talks.
So if Washington truly wants to avoid Israeli-Palestinian violence, the best thing it could do is stop trying to force both sides into talks that are doomed to fail. For contrary to the accepted wisdom, which holds that “political negotiations” are the best way to forestall violence, they’re actually the best way to make violence more likely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)America surrenders in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine
Now the world is learning the high
price of American detachment
On a Saturday afternoon in July 2012, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton invited CIA director David Petraeus to her brick colonial home in Washington. The four-star general had led George W. Bush’s U.S. troop surge in Iraq and President Barack Obama’s in Afghanistan. Clinton asked him whether it was possible to vet, train and equip moderate opposition fighters in Syria where the forces of President Bashar al-Assad had begun killing civilians by the thousands.
“He had already given careful thought to the idea, and had even started sketching out the specifics and was preparing to present a plan,” Clinton recalled in her new memoir,Hard Choices. The next month, Clinton flew to neighbouring Turkey to discuss plans for a no-fly zone over Syria and support for the opposition. Clinton and the Turkish foreign minister made calls to foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to build an international coalition. She returned to Washington “reasonably confident” that allies were on side.
But when Petraeus presented the plan to the President, Obama balked. He had just ended the Iraq war and did not want to get mired in a new conflict. He had promised war-weary Americans he would do “more nation-building at home.” Besides, the weapons could fall into the wrong hands. Given Saudi Arabia was already arming rebels, he didn’t think American arms would make a decisive difference in driving Assad from power. Clinton argued that the U.S. could train fighters responsibly, and that the goal was to weaken Assad enough to get him to the negotiating table with the opposition.
Still, Obama said no. Clinton turned her efforts to getting food and medicine to suffering Syrians, and cellphones to anti-Assad activists. But, she wrote, “all of these steps were Band-Aids.”
Clinton’s was not the only voice Obama overruled as he sought to keep the U.S. out of Syria. Last February, as the death toll surpassed 130,000 and Assad resisted UN-led peace talks, the U.S. ambassador, Robert Ford, became so frustrated with the President’s hands-off approach that he quit his job in disgust. “When I can no longer defend the policy in public, it is time for me to go,” Ford told PBS this month.
Three years after it began, the Syrian crisis has now spread to Iraq. A portion of northern Syria has been taken over by an offshoot of al-Qaeda, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which, this week, declared it has established a theocratic caliphate. Washington has been jolted by the nightmarish sight of ISIS sweeping through a large swath of Iraq—the largely Sunni north and west—seizing city after city, and looting banks and oil refineries. Iraqi forces, trained and equipped by the U.S., have in some instances dropped their weapons and run away. Executions and beheadings by ISIS are hardening sectarian divisions between Sunnis, Kurds and the Shia-led government in Baghdad.
Reluctance to aid Syria’s moderate rebels may not have been Obama’s only mistake. His failure to leave behind a residual force of several thousand troops in Iraq, as counselled by his generals and cabinet members, is now in the spotlight. Meanwhile, the President’s modest vision for American power is being tested, not only as the sectarian war in Iraq worsens, but as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionism destabilizes Europe.
The President who aimed to extract America from its entanglements abroad is suddenly learning the price of detachment. Halfway through their second terms, presidents often turn to foreign affairs as a constructive diversion from gridlock at home. But Obama is facing what could be the biggest foreign policy challenge of his presidency. And, as the superpower steps back, it may be horrified to see who steps in to fill the breach.
The potential threat ISIS poses to America is chilling. It is technologically sophisticated and well-funded by wealthy donors, theft, kidnappings and extortion. It is seizing tanks and heavy equipment intended for the Iraqi army to defend against insurgents just like ISIS. U.S. officials estimate that ISIS now numbers 10,000 fighters, of which 3,000 to 5,000 are from outside countries. Some of them have European or American passports allowing them to travel to the U.S. without visas.
With a brutal terrorist organization now controlling an area the size of some countries, including border crossings in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, critics blame Obama’s neglect of Syria and Iraq for forsaking what stability had been achieved by a decade of U.S. military effort, at a cost of nearly 4,500 American lives, and more than $1.7 trillion in taxpayer dollars.
Critics point to several key decisions in which Obama’s desire to keep out of the conflicts may have helped enable the current crisis: his decision not to leave troops behind in Iraq after 2011; his decision not to arm the Syrian rebels in the early days of the conflict; and his declaration of a “red line” against Assad’s use of chemical weapons that was not followed up with military consequences.
They say the President was wrong to assume the threat could be contained, rather than confronted: “We saw this happening, and that was what’s so frustrating. We watched them pool in eastern Syria in a way we have never seen before, thousands and thousands of al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals,” the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers, told CBS last week. As for the extremists with Western passports: “That is as dangerous as it gets.”
Of course, it was Bush’s invasion of Iraq that opened the Pandora’s box of sectarian violence in that country. Hillary Clinton had voted for it. And many of the voices now calling for a stronger U.S. role in the region had also supported the ill-fated war.
Obama’s reticent approach to the region is largely a reaction to Bush’s zeal. But the debate in Washington is whether he is being too passive where Bush was too aggressive. On May 28, in a major speech at the West Point military academy in New York, Obama laid out his vision for a more modest American role in the world. He told graduating cadets he would be betraying his duty if he ever “sent you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed to be fixed, or because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak.”
Obama said he reserved the right to use unilateral force “when our core interests demand it—when our people are threatened, when our livelihoods are at stake, when the security of our allies is in danger.” In other situations, he said, the U.S. will act through diplomacy, development and in co-operation with allies. “U.S. military action cannot be the only—or even primary—component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” he said.
Some critics see Obama’s approach as an alarming departure from America’s traditional postwar role as the guarantor of a stable world order. They fear that U.S. withdrawal will leave a power vacuum filled by the likes of ISIS. Some have argued that it emboldens leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who witnessed Obama drawing a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons by Assad, but then took no military action to stop it. Moreover, when Russia invaded Crimea and backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. response was much softer than what many had hoped for, and rattled allies in the region. A Polish newspaper recently published a leaked recording of the country’s foreign minister describing the alliance with the U.S. as “worthless” and harmful, because it leads to a “false sense of security.”
The Iraq crisis is also a challenge to Obama’s stated approach to counterterrorism. Where Bush invaded Afghanistan to root out the Taliban, who were giving sanctuary to al-Qaeda, Obama has said he will not follow suit to pursue other terrorist groups. “A strategy that involves invading every country that harbours terrorist networks is naive and unsustainable,” Obama said at West Point. (Of course, the U.S. has built up its counterterrorism efforts since 2001, including intelligence and a lethal drone program, which give it more options.) At a press conference this month, Obama emphasized he would not “play whack-a-mole” by going after individual groups such as ISIS. Instead, he would “partner” with countries where terrorists seek a foothold.
Yet Obama’s failure to reach an agreement to leave a U.S. military force in Iraq past 2011 made the country vulnerable to the invasion by ISIS, critics argue. Military commanders had counselled him to leave 20,000 troops behind. His defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued for 10,000 to 15,000 troops to be left for a transition period of three to five years. Obama ultimately offered the Iraqis a small force of 3,000, but could not strike a deal with Iraqi leaders that would give legal immunity for the troops. Obama withdrew all of them at the end of 2011. While on the re-election campaign trail Obama claimed credit for ending the Iraq war, now, he blames Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, for the absence of U.S. forces there: “That wasn’t a decision made by me; that was a decision made by the Iraqi government,” he said at a press conference this month.
Insisting on a small number of troops, however, may have made a deal less likely. “Few Iraqi politicians were willing to fight for such a meaningless presence,” argues Kenneth Pollock, a Middle East specialist at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “There were other ways that Washington might have handled the legal issues as well, but the White House made clear it was uninterested.”
But Steve Simon, who served as senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs at the White House from 2011 through 2012, argues there was little Washington could do. “My recollection is that the administration tried very hard. They put a lot of pressure on Maliki and they worked parliamentarians pretty hard to make the case,” he told reporters.
Only last summer, after the U.S. government concluded that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people, did Obama approve sending small arms to the rebels who are fighting against the regime but are not ISIS extremists—a move that Ford, the former U.S. ambassador, and other critics say was too little and too slow.
Ford is urging for more and heavier military hardware, including mortars and surface-to-air missiles to help the Free Syrian Army. “More hesitation and unwillingness to commit to enabling the moderate opposition fighters to fight more effectively both the jihadists and the regime simply hasten the day when American forces will have to intervene against al-Qaeda in Syria,” Ford wrote this month in the New York Times.
As the crisis has worsened, Obama has responded. On June 20, he ordered 300 members of the U.S. special forces to “assess” the situation on the ground and to “advise and assist” the Iraqi military. On June 26, Obama formally requested $500 million from Congress to train and arm the Syrian rebels, the biggest single step taken so far by the administration. The money was part of a request for $1.5 billion for a stabilization fund that would also include partnering with neighbours such as Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. The same day, the United Nations said conditions have deteriorated to the point that 10.8 million Syrians—half the population —now require humanitarian assistance.
Obama is under pressure to do more, such as launch air strikes against ISIS, a step he did not rule out. “We will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action, if and when we determine that the situation on the ground requires it.” However, sending U.S. troops into combat is off the table. “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq.”
Both in Obama’s speeches and in his actions in Syria and Iraq, some see a troubling shift to a more circumspect America on the world stage. “Superpowers don’t get to retire” is the title of a recent essay by historian Robert Kagan in The New Republic. Kagan argues that the Syria and Ukraine crises “signal a transition into a different world order, or into a world disorder of a kind not seen since the 1930s.” He thinks that with military spending larger than all other nations combined, the U.S. had the power to enforce a liberal world order and promote democracy. If America refrains from using its own power, other actors, such as Putin, will fill the void. “The world will change much more quickly than they imagine. And there is no democratic superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters,” Kagan wrote.
For now, there is little consensus among Americans about their role at a time when they thought they were finished with Iraq and had decapitated al-Qaeda. But they are worried about the unfolding crisis. A recent New York Times/CBS poll suggests 58 per cent disapprove of the way Obama is handling foreign policy, a jump of 10 points in the last month to the highest level since he took office in 2009. (Obama’s overall approval rating is down to 40 per cent, with 54 per cent disapproving of his job as President. That is where Bush was at the same point in his second term.)
They are evenly divided about whether Obama should send 300 people from the special forces to Iraq, or whether he should have left a residual force behind in 2011. The poll found the biggest decline in support for Obama was among Democrats, many of whom oppose sending even a small number of troops.
There is one thing they do agree on. A record number of Americans—75 per cent—now believe the Iraq War was a mistake. No one knows that better than Obama.
3a) Hillary Clinton is past her time
Fate hasn't been kind to Hillary Clinton, at least not in its most recent phase.
3a) Hillary Clinton is past her time
Fate hasn't been kind to Hillary Clinton, at least not in its most recent phase.
In 2008, when the plate was set for the national Democrats, she lost the nomination to Barack Obama, of scant years and no gravitas, who soared out of nowhere to wrench destiny from her on the unspecified promise of "change."
Now, "change" has come, and people don't like it. Iraq changed from a safe, stable ally (just ask Obama) to a terrorist haven, one of the reasons why, though no fellow Democrats seem likely to edge her, her chances of winning the White House seem dim. Between 2008 and 2014, her prospects have worsened. Here are the main reasons why.
Three times is not the charm, unless you’re a Reagan or Roosevelt, the only three presidents in the 20th century who saw their party hold the White House for more than two terms. Franklin Roosevelt, of course, pulled off a third, and fourth, term for himself in the course of the greatest world war ever experienced, and Harry Truman made it five in a row for his party by drawing the line in the sand for the Soviet Union.
Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were sufficiently popular to pull William Howard Taft and George Bush the elder over the line. But neither was able to win re-election, and the peace-and-prosperity of Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton wasn't enough to elect their vice presidents (who claimed foul play was afoot).
Obama cannot claim either, and no candidate was ever elected dragging a record like his round her neck. Barring exceptional circumstances, the natural move is to the opposite party, at least to make sure the mistakes will be different. Could any one now say, "Let us continue?" Guess not.
When Hillary Clinton took on the job as the country's First Diplomat, she probably thought it was just what she needed, a non-political job at the highest of levels, to bolster the missing page in her dossier and give her some world-leader credibility. In fact, it tied her to the president's most conspicuous failures: the "reset" with Russia, Benghazi and Libya, and the deepening mess in Iraq. She may say she was against the withdrawal of all of our forces, but she was in place when the decision was taken, and the best reading is that she failed to have influence.
Having voted "yes" on the war in Iraq, "no" on the surge and "present" on some truly dreadful decisions, her record gives everyone something to rage at. She can’t say that Obama did well, as that would be madness, but she can’t critique him too much, or she’ll make his base angry. This is truly the worst of all worlds.
And then there is time, which, at least in this instance, can’t be said to be serving her well. If a political shelf-life is about 14 years — the span between the time Reagan and Kennedy won their first office, and their elections as president — Hillary has spent 22 years in the national spotlight. In 2016, it will be 24 — a very long time in the center of action, the target of love, fear and rage. Reagan was her age when he was running, but no one in the late 1970’s talked about "Reagan fatigue."
"Clinton fatigue" is all over this effort, in her stumbling replies, her slumping book sales, the report that people who read it on Kindle don’t get past page 33.
At long last, our Clinton fixation is over. Like Rhett Butler, we don't give a damn.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standardand author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
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