Obama’s Successful Foreign Failure

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Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal

By Norman Podhoretz.

It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama’s way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as “incompetent,” “bungling,” “feckless,” “amateurish” and “in over his head” coming from his political opponents on the right.

For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world? As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all.

Summing up the net effect of all this, as astute a foreign observer as Conrad Black can flatly say that, “Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.”

Yet if this is indeed the pass to which Mr. Obama has led us—and I think it is—let me suggest that it signifies not how incompetent and amateurish the president is, but how skillful. His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it.

The key to understanding what Mr. Obama has pulled off is the astonishing statement he made in the week before being elected president: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” To those of us who took this declaration seriously, it meant that Mr. Obama really was the left-wing radical he seemed to be, given his associations with the likes of the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not to mention the intellectual influence over him of Saul Alinsky, the original “community organizer.”

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Syria Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Barack Obama

By Ron Fournier.

The good news is we’re not at war. The bad news is … almost everything else about President Obama’s handling of Syria – the fumbling and flip-flopping and marble-mouthing – undercut his credibility, and possibly with it his ability to lead the nation and world.

As he addressed a global audience Tuesday night, liberal elites blindly accepted White House fiction that Russian intervention this week was somehow part of Obama’s master plan. Their conservative counterparts practically rooted against a diplomatic breakthrough, preferring an Obama black eye over peace.

Obama won! Obama lost! The fact is it’s too soon to keep score. In the long view of this past week, I suspect the Syria standoff will stand as an example of the best and worst of Obama’s leadership. Granted, in the heat of the moment, it’s far easier to catalogue the worst.

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Syria Can Shoot Back, Mr. President

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Syria: As a Chinese warship joins Russian ships in the Mediterranean, we should remember a cruise missile attack on an Israeli warship. President Obama should understand that Syria and Hezbollah have missiles, too.

As the Obama administration continues to deploy its comical weapons, with Secretary of State John Kerry promising America any attack on Syria will be “unbelievably small,” a Chinese warship deploys off the Syrian coast, joining its Russian counterparts in what used to be an “American lake,” the Mediterranean Sea.

The People’s Liberation Army has dispatched the amphibious dock landing ship Jinggangshan, a move that follows the announcement that Russia is sending three more ships — two destroyers and the missile cruiser Moskva — to the eastern Mediterranean to bolster forces that already include three other warships dispatched over the last two weeks.

All are a pointed reminder that we are not the only player that has pieces on the board.

Launched in 2011, the 19,000-metric-ton Jinggangshan is a 689-foot-long warship that can carry 1,000 soldiers, helicopters, armored fighting vehicles, boats and landing craft, according to a report in the China Daily.

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The GI Bill isn’t Good Enough for Veterans

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Early in his first term, President Barack Obama signed the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The new law provided much-needed reforms to the traditional GI Bill, such as simplified tuition rates, the ability to transfer entitlements to dependents and expanded access to higher education for many veterans.

Unfortunately, there are still a few kinks in the system that prevent veterans from taking full advantage of these benefits. Byzantine rules imposed by the bureaucracy are difficult to understand, making access difficult. For example, many benefits assume a four-year degree track, meaning veterans who graduate early often leave money on the table and that those who graduate late run out too quickly. Additionally, student veterans must rely on untrained school administrators for assistance, resulting in frequent delays. Finally, many veterans qualify for the GI Bill but have already completed their degrees, putting them in the unfortunate position of qualifying for educational benefits but unable to use them.

Adding to the frustration, and unlike most other benefits, many veterans were required to pay for their educational benefits before becoming qualified. For example, particularly for those covered by the traditional GI Bill, military members had to complete their service commitments honorably and pay up to $1,200 from their own paychecks in order to “buy in” and qualify for benefits. When these veterans are later denied full access to their benefits because of red tape or incomprehensible rules, the costs can run into the thousands of dollars.

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August Jobs Report: We’re ‘Dead in the Water’

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Obama_jobsOne of the first economists I read after the monthly, “official” jobs report comes out is James Pethokoukis of AEI’s public policy blog.

Pethokoukis has a nice way of breaking through all the spin and revealing an employment picture that goes inside the numbers to tell us the true nature of the jobs market.

After August’s horrible numbers, Pethokousis doesn’t seem optimistic.

How do you know the August jobs report was pretty bad? When the best thing you can say is that it might have met Wall Street expectations if not for a temporary shutdown in the porn industry last month. (The motion picture and sound recording industry lost 22,000 jobs in August, according to the BLS.) Sure, the White House can argue, as economic adviser Jason Furman did right after the report’s release, that the “incoming economic data broadly suggest that the recovery continues to make progress.” But consider the following:

1. This was the jobs report that was supposed to reflect an economy kicking into higher gear. Goldman Sachs, for instance, was looking for 200,000 net new jobs. And whisper estimates were even higher. Instead, the economy added just 169,000 jobs vs. the 180,000 consensus forecast. HERE.

Clinton. Christie. Cringe.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On Jan. 20, 1981, Michael Deaver, a political aide, peered into a bedroom in Blair House, across from the White House, and said to the man still abed, “It’s 8 o’clock. You’re going to be inaugurated as president in a few hours.” From beneath the blankets, Ronald Reagan said, “Do I have to?”

Some are so eager to be inaugurated in 2017 that the 2016 campaign has begun 28 months before the 1.4 percent of Americans who live in Iowa and New Hampshire express themselves. It is, therefore, not too soon to get a head start on being dismayed. Consider two probable candidates.

Hillary Clinton comes among us trailing clouds of incense, so some acolytes will call it ill-mannered, even misogynistic, to ask: What exactly is it about the condition of the world, and about America’s relations with other nations, that recommends the former secretary of state for an even more elevated office?

Granted, neither she nor any other U.S. official can be blamed for the world’s blemishes. To think otherwise is to embrace what Greg Weiner, an Assumption College political scientist, calls “narcissistic polity disorder.” It is the belief that everything everywhere is about us. Today, it is the delusion that, although events in Egypt and Syria look like violent clashes between Egyptians and Syrians concerning what those countries should be, the events really are mostly about what America has or has not done.

That said, however, this also should be said: Clinton’s accomplishments are not less impressive than those of many who have sought, and some who have won, the presidency. But the disproportion between the thinness of her record and the ardor of her advocates suggests that her gender is much of her significance.

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Why Can’t the Community Organizer, Organize a Community?

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Photo Credit: ABC

Photo Credit: ABC

As you may recall, much of Senator Obama’s message in 2008 was about international coalitions. He mocked President Bush for “going at it alone.” I guess that 40-something countries in Iraq was not a big enough coalition. Or, having UK, Canadian and other NATO soldiers take bullets in Afghanistan was not enough either.

Today, President Obama stands alone in the world. He can’t even get the UK in Syria. He has found some “moral support” but no one is offering airplanes or missiles.

President Obama is saying that the world drew a “red line.” However, no one seems ready to enforce it or fight for the innocent people of Syria.

President Obama is painfully learning that it was easier to build coalitions in the campaign trail than from The Oval Office.

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If Obama Wants to Bomb Someone, How About the Syrian Terror Training Camps of the Benghazi Attackers?

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Photo Credit: Front Page Mag

Photo Credit: Front Page Mag

If Obama really wants to bomb someone, how about bombing them? Instead Obama sent the FBI to Benghazi on a failed mission after the killers of Americans who still walk free, but wants to send cruise missiles to Damascus.

Maybe he couldn’t spare a drone the night of the attack, but he certainly should be able to dig one up now. Or a cruise missile or two.

U.S. intelligence agencies earlier this month uncovered new evidence that al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Benghazi are training foreign jihadists to fight with Syria’s Islamist rebels, according to U.S. officials.

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Barack Obama is Heading for a Humiliating Defeat Over Syria: This Will be a Massive Blow to his Presidency

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Photo Credit: Telegraph

Photo Credit: Telegraph

Politico has an eye-opening piece today revealing the extent to which the White House is staring defeat in the face over Syria. According to the influential Washington-based publication, President Obama doesn’t have the votes in the House of Representatives to secure a win, with large-scale opposition among Republicans, and lukewarm backing among Democrats:

If the House voted today on a resolution to attack Syria, President Barack Obama would lose — and lose big. That’s the private assessment of House Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides who are closely involved in the process. If the Senate passes a use-of-force resolution next week — which is no sure thing — the current dynamics suggest that the House would defeat it.

That would represent a dramatic failure for Obama, and once again prove that his sway over Congress is extraordinarily limited. The loss would have serious reverberations throughout the next three months, when Obama faces off against Congress in a series of high-stakes fiscal battles.

If Obama doesn’t get Congressional backing for military action, he could still go ahead with strikes against Syria, but it would be a huge political gamble. It would probably be a bridge too far for a president with sinking approval ratings, and his party facing crucial midterm elections in 2014. A defeat in Congress would be a massive blow to the Obama presidency, as well as to the president’s personal credibility, and could well amount to the biggest humiliation of his career so far.

Here are several key reasons why Obama is in trouble over Syria:

1. The president hasn’t made a convincing case why a Syria intervention is in the US national interest. He has also sent a confusing message over his ‘red line’ over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, declaring in Sweden that this wasn’t his red line, but that of the international community.

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Obama the Constitutional Hero

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

President Obama surprised many (including the U.S. military, apparently) with his decision to emulate his predecessor by seeking congressional authorization to attack a Baathist regime in the Middle East.

The media’s reaction, while predictable, has bordered on parody, lending weight to conservative suspicions about the press corps’ particular devotion to the current president. “Quite extraordinary: after 30 years of presidents strengthening powers of exec branch, POTUS is giving some of that power back to Congress,” NBC’s Chuck Todd gushed on Twitter.

Numerous outlets echoed this theme of Obama as restorer of the Constitution. BuzzFeed wrote of Obama’s “big Syria power giveaway.” The Hill reported that the decision to seek congressional approval “breaks from precedent” and “represented a departure from the policies of several predecessors,” while somewhat awkwardly noting that George W. Bush sought (and won, overwhelmingly) authorization for the Iraq War and the invasion of Afghanistan — as Bush’s father did before the First Gulf War.

Yahoo! News columnist Walter Shapiro praised Obama’s “history-defying decision,” saying it “may well be the most important presidential act on the Constitution and war-making powers since Harry Truman decided to sidestep Congress and not seek its backing to launch the Korean war.” He neglected to mention the recent examples undermining that fearsome trend, other than to denounce the younger Bush’s “hyperbolic . . . claims about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.”

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Where’s the Anti-War Left?

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Photo Credit: JTF Guantanamo

Photo Credit: JTF Guantanamo

Barack Obama ran for president as the last of the red-hot pacifists, so it might have sounded preposterous to predict that after a few security briefings at the White House, President Obama would follow in the same policy footsteps of horrid warmonger George Bush, with his anti-terrorist wars and strategies.

So where is the anti-war movement now?

“What anti-war movement?” former Congressman Dennis Kucinich asked when called for comment last week. Medea Benjamin of the radical group Code Pink agreed: “The antiwar movement is a shadow of its former self under the Bush years.” Cindy Sheehan quipped, “The ‘anti-war left’ was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the ‘anti-Republican War’ movement.”

The “Wonkblog” of The Washington Post ran an article (online only, not in the newspaper) headlined, “How Obama demobilized the antiwar movement.” As much as our “objective” media lamely tried to portray the peaceniks mobilizing in the streets against Team Bush as nonpartisan and non-ideological, the truth is the movement collapsed as soon as the Democrats tasted power.

Sociologists Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas surveyed the leftist protesters for a 2011 paper and found that after Obama won, “attendance at anti-war rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement dissipated … the antiwar movement demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, if not policy success.”

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