Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Americans: "Congenitally Unreliable" Allies?

The significance of Obama's surrender speech is starting to sink in. Brett Stephens notices: It emboldens the Taliban. It increases the risk to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It strengthens already potent anti-American forces in Pakistan and weakens the hand of moderates. It strengthens the hand of Iran. It further weakens NATO. It gives Hamid Karzai opportunity and motive to reinvent himself as an anti-American leader. It accelerates Afghanistan's barely suppressed, and invariably violent, centrifugal forces. "Finally, it signals that the United States, like Britain before it, is a waning power."

Let them eat sand: The U.N. World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country's 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.

Peter Feaver: "The 'war of necessity, war of choice' storyline is dead, but it will be revived again and again because the framework, while a poor guide to strategy, is a useful rhetorical device. It neatly simplifies tough national security decisions into bumper-sticker labels. It allows a politician (or pundit) to praise wars he supports and criticize wars he does not support and make it sound like he is doing so for strategic reasons that go beyond 'this is a war I support and that is a war I do not support.' In the meantime, however, the Obama team is not likely to talk about Afghanistan as a war of necessity. If the last three years are any guide, they might not talk much about Afghanistan at all."

3 Comments:

Blogger James O'Hearn said...

Terry,

Stop nicturating on the hope and change parade! If people keep bad mouthing Obama, it's gonna start to seem like Bush wasn't so bad after all!

9:57 AM  
Blogger levon said...

Was Bush really that bad?

5:42 PM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

However bad Bush was, Obama is making him look better every day. On the matter of the Arab Spring, Condi Rice is being made to look perfectly prophetic, while Obama is making Hilary look like a bloody fool. That takes effort, not just incompetence. Afghanistan is now on the verge of war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. The anti-Taliban militias are re-arming, and the country is being sundered along "ethnic" lines. His ISAF partners are running away, and the majority of Afghans, who not long ago supported NATO, are feeling the sickening pain of knives in their backs. Obama is turning out to be the most reactionary president since Nixon and the dumbest president since Jimmah.

8:53 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home