US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1782

Just because the Middle East’s descent into chaos is hardly the fault of the Obama administration, that doesn’t mean its policies in the region are not an egregious failure.

The situation in the region is unprecedented. For the first time since the World Wars, virtually every country from Libya to Afghanistan is involved in a military conflict. (Oman seems to be the exception.) The degree of chaos, uncertainty, and complexity among the twisted and often contradictory alliances and enmities is mind-boggling. America and its allies are fighting alongside Iran to combat the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria but in Yemen, the United States and many of those same regional partners are collaborating to push back Iranian-backed Houthi forces. Israel and Saudi Arabia are closely aligned in their concerns about Iran while historical divisions between the two remain great. Iran supports Bashar al-Assad in Syria; the United States and Western allies deplore his policies but tolerate his presence while some of the rebel forces we are supporting in the fight against the Islamic State in that country seek his (long overdue) removal. The United States wants the states of the region to stand up for their own interests — just not in Libya or when they don’t get America’s permission first.

The technical foreign-policy term for this is giant cluster-fuck.

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So even though the Obama administration is clearly not responsible for most of the root and many of the exacerbating causes of the current melee in the Middle East, it is also true that it does not have the luxury of walking away from this upheaval/these conflicts, or the room to employ halfway measures, reactive or largely improvised initiatives that exist without benefit of any broader strategy. And unfortunately for America, for our allies, for the region, and for the world, those are the three primary approaches that have been employed by this White House.

These approaches have contributed materially to the situation we now face. The situation in Iraq was stabilizing and markedly improving in the last two years of the Bush administration, thanks to the surge, attention to the Sunnis, and the active week-to-week involvement of the president and senior officials in the details of trying to fix a situation — let’s be blunt, a catastrophe — of which they were the authors. That includes trying to manage their really bad choice as prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. It was no Jeffersonian paradise. But the trend line was in the right direction when they left office. President Obama’s decision to rush to the exits (which took the form of not really doing what was necessary to produce the kind of Status of Forces Agreement that would have enabled a prolonged American troop presence) undid this. The inattentiveness to the mismanagement of Maliki’s government and the rise of unrest and later IS among the Sunnis exacerbated this.

Of course, the president’s fiasco of indecision, reversed decisions, and ignoring the recommendations of his team regarding addressing the growing unrest in Syria contributed to this. Sluggish and confused reactions to the Arab Spring were compounded by a major mishandling and dangerous weakening of the vital relationship the United States had with Egypt. Obama’s ambivalence about taking action and then doing what was necessary to produce successful outcomes in Libya was yet another such mismanaged effort that created more problems than it solved.

It is an irony of the Obama years that although he raised hopes of a new, better era in regional relations with a speech he gave in the heart of the Arab world in Cairo, that ultimately his only real efforts to change relations “for the better” in the region were not with Arabs at all but with Persians. The administration’s good first-term toughness toward Iran on nuclear sanctions was followed by a second-term hunger for a nuclear deal that was so great that everyone from Tehran to Toledo, Ohio, now believes that the United States wants the deal more than the Iranians do and has lost negotiating leverage as a result. This shift, which was not accompanied by sufficient coordination with our important regional allies from Israel to the Gulf that might allay their concerns about a deal or a U.S.-Iran rapprochement, became more troubling to those allies (and to students of the region) as Iran became the one country in the Middle East to actually make gains thanks to the growing chaos. It has done so in Yemen, through its ever-closer ties with Baghdad and the Iraqi government’s dependency on Iranian ground troops and advisors and weapons to help combat IS, and it has increased its influence on the regime in Syria (where Assad now looks like to outlast Obama in office).

The indignant comments of American Gen. Lloyd Austin this week denouncing the idea that he might ever command troops that would fight alongside Shiite militias after their treatment of Americans during the Iraq War were moving. But they rang hollow given that they hung on a semantic deception. The world knows that America is providing air support for Iranian-led, Shiite-militia-backed, Iraqi-supported forces in the war against IS in that country. They know that for all the talk of America’s coalition, Iran is gaining more influence in Baghdad because they are willing to put boots on the ground. That is why it is not Austin but Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani who is celebrated as a hero in and around the Shiite and even in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. Do not think this reality, denials aside, has not fed the growing and acute distrust of the Obama administration among some of our most vital allies in the Gulf, in Egypt, and elsewhere. Do not think it did not lead them to the awareness that they would have to take action on their own in Yemen to counterbalance Iran’s gains. The United States has since scrambled to paper this over by arguing Washington is supporting both the fight against the Houthis in Yemen and not really working too closely with Iran in Iraq. (The retreat of Shiite militias, allegedly because of their discomfort with working alongside the United States, rings suspicious to me and a bit too conveniently orchestrated. We may not “coordinate” with the Iranians but we sure do play an active game of telephone with them through Iraqi interlocutors … at least.)

Meanwhile, the Iran nuclear talks have obviously also taken a toll on the deteriorating relationship with Israel. Now, as noted above, Benjamin Netanyahu is no walk in the park as a partner. But it is also undeniable that the White House has poured gasoline on the flames that have all but incinerated the traditional foundations of the relationship. Whatever the next 21 months may bring — and a further deterioration of the relationship is likely — it’s no exaggeration to say that the relationship between the leaders of the United States and Israel is at a historic low.

In fact, you can say what you want about the origins of the current mess in the Middle East, but the fact that America’s relations with every important country in the region are worse with the exception of Iran is telling.

Bad choices, mismanagement, and faulty diplomacy are not the primary causes of America’s problems of its own making in the region. The biggest culprit is strategic incoherence. We don’t seem to have a clear view of our interests or a vision for the future of the region fostered in collaboration with our allies there and elsewhere. “Leave it to the folks on the ground” is no more a U.S. foreign-policy strategy than is “don’t do stupid shit.” It is a modality at best and in fact, it is really an abrogation of responsibility when so many of these relationships do have trade, investment, political, military, and other elements that give the United States leverage that it could and should use to advance its interests. Our relations with other major powers likewise should provide us with such tools if we were to do the diplomatic heavy lifting to produce coordinated efforts. (And arguing that’s what we are doing in Iran is not compelling when we are not doing it with regard to the region’s many other problems or when we have done it to ill-effect in places like Libya or Syria.)

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We need to push back hard on the idea that somehow Iran is about to become our friend. The nuclear threat is just one the many threats it poses and not the greatest one. Geopolitically, our failings and inaction have created a sense among countries of the region to seek other support from other big powers. From Egypt to Israel to the Gulf, virtually every country in the region is (ironically) pivoting to Asia — to China and to India and, where possible, to Japan and Southeast Asia. And Russian influence is growing too in Cairo, in Tel Aviv, and in Tehran. Better burden-sharing is fine. Greatly reduced influence not so much. In the region that means rebuilding old alliances through attention to our partners’ needs, through actions, not words, through listening, not offering up placating speeches. Further, we must recognize that in some conflicts unless we are willing to commit some number of boots on the ground (and the fight against IS is one such conflict) we will not be seen to be truly leading, truly committed, and others who are willing to make such commitments (like the Iranians) will gain.

Should we aggressively seek diplomatic solutions to the fights in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya? Yes. But we will only be successful if our opponents know that they will pay a high price that would be inflicted by a committed coalition that includes the resources and genuine engagement of the leaders of the richest and most powerful nation on Earth alongside regional leaders it clearly trusts and empowers to take the lead on regional issues. And the negotiations will only work if we practice the kind of diplomacy that is not impeded by artificial deadlines and undercut by messages that we need the deal more than the other side does.

So, by all means, let’s acknowledge the complex origins of the current crisis. But let’s not minimize that the failure to be more effective in addressing it can and almost certainly will lead to major losses for American interests in the region. Further and finally, this is a moment that requires great vigilance and should be producing much greater multilateral action by the United States and our allies and within the U.N. Having effectively every country in the region at war is as likely to lead to escalation as it is to solutions. More so. We are not far from seeing the conflicts connect into what could be the biggest conflagration the world has seen since August 1945. And even if that does not happen, prolonged chaos will feed into the spread of extremism in Africa, Asia, and the spread of terrorism in Europe and North America. The stakes could not be higher. And it is clear, even if we recognize America’s limited ability to impact what is happening on the ground, that we have an urgent obligation to try and to try to do so in new ways. Because what we have done for the past six years is just not working and in fact is making the world’s worst situation worse.

On March 31 2015 06:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


No the point is that claims that something doesn't lead to increased risk of cancer are run of the mill bullshit. + Show Spoiler +

Yeah Americans likely flush more than 2x the GDP of Greenland literally down the drain.

On March 29 2015 10:58 xDaunt wrote:
This is about as scathing as it gets:



Source.

Go read the whole article.

The only time I ever hear about an infinite pie are people telling me there is no infinite pie. That seems to be nothing more than a popular straw man.

In what way does someone else’s success harm me? Such a viewpoint stems from the misguided notion that the economy is a pie of fixed size. If one person gets a bigger portion of the pie, others of necessity get smaller pieces, and the role of government is to divide up the slices of that pie. In reality, though, the size of the pie is infinite.

On March 31 2015 07:50 GreenHorizons wrote:


Speaking of spreading bullshit....

From the National Journal, the author is a member of the CATO institute.



Source

'Straw man' my ass.

On March 31 2015 08:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Fair enough, though in that context 'infinite' is a technical exaggeration rather than an incorrect statement.

On March 31 2015 08:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


Whether it's a 'technical exaggeration' or an 'incorrect statement' doesn't really matter to the point.

On March 31 2015 08:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

To what point, that it's not a straw man? That was address by the phrase 'fair enough'.

If you mean your point about waste, that was still off the mark. Possibilities of reducing waste don't make waste magically go away nor is reducing waste / waste recovery necessarily viable (i.e. reducing waste could be a net loss of resources).

On March 31 2015 09:06 GreenHorizons wrote:


That last bit is exactly a straw man (for anyone struggling to tell the difference).

My point is fine, your interpretation/extrapolation is off (maybe my articulation for such an audience is too). The only person talking about magically making waste 'go away' is you.

Although, I am not particularly interested in having this discussion with someone who might just call me a liar and never even say what I lied about. So I won't be chasing you around any bushes on this.

On March 31 2015 10:16 Simberto wrote:
It is very easy to reduce food waste.

Don't expect to have everything you want available at the supermarket at any time. If you change a supermarket to a place that stocks roughly as much stuff as people actually buy, as opposed to enough stuff that everything is always available plus some additional storage for fluctuation etc..., you can greatly reduce food waste.

Of course, that would mean that you sometimes couldn't buy what you want, and would have to deal with buying what is there instead. People in modern countries really don't like that.