Tag: foreign policy

Foreign policy experts evacuating the USS Obama Administration.

Not good news:

On September 22, Barack Obama’s hand-selected advisor coordinating global efforts to combat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, retired General John Allen, announced his intention to resign the post. Within a week, Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, also handed in her resignation. Given the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East into which the West is increasingly committing resources, these resignations are alarming.

Continue reading Foreign policy experts evacuating the USS Obama Administration.

Some idiot Obama administration official opened his/her pie-hole on arming Syrian Kurds.

FIND OUT WHO LEAKED THIS, AND HAVE HIM OR HER ARRESTED.  I am not joking.

Last weekend, the White House announced that the U.S. had dropped 50 tons of ammunition to Syrian Arabs fighting the Islamic State. Some officials now say that the new Arab coalition was a front and that Kurdish groups received most of the weapons — as the U.S. intended.

[snip]

One senior administration official who works on the issue told us that the White House knew that the coalition was likely to pass on most if not all of the weapons to the Kurds.

Continue reading Some idiot Obama administration official opened his/her pie-hole on arming Syrian Kurds.

Foreign policy is going to be a BIG deal in 2016. Get used to it.

The acceleration of radical Islamist attacks in Europe – I don’t think that the jihadists are afraid of us anymore – is probably going to continue. I’m hoping like Hell we don’t have another terrorist attack on American soil, of course: and I think that our counter-terrorism apparatus is going to cocoon the White House when it comes to operational decisions, assuming that they haven’t done that already*. But even if we don’t have another Boston Marathon bombing it’s going to be thin going for any candidate who has had a hand in shaping American foreign policy between 2009 and today. Continue reading Foreign policy is going to be a BIG deal in 2016. Get used to it.

Why is the President talking about ISIS tonight?

This is why.

The Democrats are 18 points in the hole on foreign policy, 38 on defense. I’m trying to remember the last time I’ve seen the Democrats that far behind on those topics. Admittedly, I’m kind of loopy right now from the various cold remedies, so maybe it’s been like this for a while and I just don’t remember; still… those aren’t great numbers. To put it, as they say, mildly.

Quote of the Day, Mitt Romney Twists The Foreign Policy Knife edition.

The use of the Shakespeare quote was particularly vicious. I approve, mind you:

In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options. In foreign affairs as in life, there is, as Shakespeare had it, “a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

Continue reading Quote of the Day, Mitt Romney Twists The Foreign Policy Knife edition.

Bush Rehabilitation Watch, 11/14/2011.

Newsbusters (via Hot Air) has the details.  Short version: the realization that our current President is actually a pretty bad communicator of what I will charitably call his faction’s “ideas” is starting to sink in among our Beltway would-be overlords.  Particularly among the circadian media.  It then follows that, should a member of said media happen to want to get President Obama re-elected, it would be necessary to do some of the heavy lifting him- or herself.  Alas, there isn’t a block and tackle in existence that can lift Obama’s domestic policy out of the Swamp of Fail, so if you’re a self-appointed agitprop specialist for this administration you’re left with talking up the President’s foreign policy, which at least has the virtue of not having anything to do with Obamacare.

But, wait!  How can any of these people talk up Obama’s foreign policy ‘successes’ without also talking up George W Bush’s, given that the former is pretty much (badly) imitating the latter?  That’s a silly question: they open up their mouths and start talking.  You don’t think that they really meant all that old talk about how awful Bush’s foreign policy was, do you?  No, that was just pap for the room-temperature IQ Left – pap designed to get the media’s Democratic Beltway buddies some sweet, sweet House and Senate chairmanships.  But now things are serious.  Just ask Tom Friedman. Continue reading Bush Rehabilitation Watch, 11/14/2011.

Mort Zuckerman dismisses Obama.

Ouch.

Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, that’s pretty much the worst thing that you can say about a person in English.  It’s what you fall back on when you can’t credibly claim competence or experience for somebody.

Via Riehl World View.  Read the whole thing, although with a title like “World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur” you almost don’t have to.  It is… instructive… to consider that it’s hard to come up with an ally whom we haven’t insulted in the last two years.  Canada’s upset over our trade shenanigans.  Great Britain feels like it’s being repeatedly kicked because of the President’s daddy issues.  India is wondering why the heck the White House isn’t interested in building on Bush’s outreach.  Israel’s visibly deciding that the American government is more likely to condemn Holocaust II than it is to prevent it.  Western Europe’s getting exasperated with our fiscal policy, Eastern Europe’s getting nervous at our willingness to let the Russians repossess them, and we even managed to tick off Japan over the Okinawa air base thing.  And don’t get me started on South America.   About the only ally that I can come up with as being still more or less unscathed by our foreign policy is maybe Australia.

Now watch: the President will get caught on tape sneering at [ yellow tail ], or something.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Passage of the Day.

This article is only superficially funny when directed towards our current President’s foreign policy reputation; or, more accurately, our current President’s lack of same.  In its pop-cultural way, it’s actually devastating.

Let’s move forward a bit from Machiavelli for our strategic guidance. Let’s refer instead to the great classic of American strategic pedagogy, Happy Days.

[snip]

In one episode, Fonzie tried to teach Richie his style. Richie practiced the grimaces, the flexes, the stares, but alas the bad guys were not impressed and certainly not deterred.

In the midst of a desperate scrape, Richie turned to Fonzie imploringly and asked: Why are my deadly looks, threatening flexes and strategic grimaces having no effect?

Oh yeah, Fonzie replied, I forgot to tell you. For all that to work, once in your life you have to have hit someone. You cannot imagine a deeper strategic insight.


Continue reading Passage of the Day.