America plays its role in a changing world right
By Fareed Zakaria, WashPost, Thursday, February 27, 7:06 PM
As America navigates a changing world, the people who seem to be having the greatest difficulty with the adjustment are the country’s pundits. Over the past few weeks, a new conventional wisdom has congealed on the op-ed pages: The United States is in retreat, and this is having terrible consequences around the world.
This week, The Post’s Richard Cohen presented the usual parade of horrible things happening around the world — chiefly Syria — for which President Obama is to blame, and he added a few new ones for good measure, such as Scotland’s and Catalonia’s possible moves toward secession. In the face of all these challenges, Cohen asserted, Obama refuses to be the world’s policeman or even its “hall monitor.” Yes, if only the president would blow a whistle, the Scots and Catalans would end their centuries-old quest for independence!
Forget the Federal Reserve’s “taper,” Niall Ferguson tells us in the Wall Street Journal, the much greater danger is Washington’s “geopolitical taper.” He presents as evidence of Obama’s disastrous policies the fact that more people have died in the “Greater Middle East” under Obama than under George W. Bush. But there is a huge difference in the two cases. In the Bush years, the numbers were high because of the war in Iraq, a conflict initiated by the Bush administration. In the Obama years, the numbers are high because of the war in Syria, a conflict that the Obama administration has stayed out of. If this logic were to be followed, Bush is responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan and Congo during his presidency.
Most of the critiques were written before the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, so they tend to view Ukraine as another example of the weak and feckless Obama administration. Events in Ukraine actually illustrate how the world has changed and how U.S. leadership is better exercised in this new era.
(More here.)
TM Comment: The U.S. is now withdrawing from Afghanistan, the longest foreign war in our history. Through a perverse “mission creep,” the campaign to oust al Qaeda became a hostile occupation of Afghan territory.
Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us 6500 dead and 100,000 wounded; the financial costs are projected to total at least $5 trillion and could reach $7 trillion. Additionally, we have created or reconfigured at least 263 security organizations and increased annual intelligence spending by 250 percent.
Regardless of such costs, there is always a war party in the U.S. arguing for military action against somebody, currently Iran and Syria. They sometimes invoke pseudo-patriotic images like John Wayne, a WWII draft avoider who spent the rest of his career pretending he was a war hero. The interventions are invariably vital to our interests, sure to be short, and will end in victory.
In earlier times, the U.S. intervened in Nicaragua 13 times and on multiple occasions in Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama and China. We intervened in the Russian civil war, and landed troops in Yugoslavia and Turkey, Greece and the Philippines, Argentina and Chile, and invaded Granada in 1983. Our interventions led to dictators like Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas. In addition, we trained and supported Central American militaries and their death squads in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, sent military contingents to Somalia and Bosnia, attacked Serbia, and twice deployed troops to Lebanon to deal with the fall-out from Israel’s invasion.
Predictably, the super-patriots are claiming Obama’s return to sanity is capitulation.
We've seen the Neocons' militaristic policies. In fact, we've seen enough of them.
As America navigates a changing world, the people who seem to be having the greatest difficulty with the adjustment are the country’s pundits. Over the past few weeks, a new conventional wisdom has congealed on the op-ed pages: The United States is in retreat, and this is having terrible consequences around the world.
This week, The Post’s Richard Cohen presented the usual parade of horrible things happening around the world — chiefly Syria — for which President Obama is to blame, and he added a few new ones for good measure, such as Scotland’s and Catalonia’s possible moves toward secession. In the face of all these challenges, Cohen asserted, Obama refuses to be the world’s policeman or even its “hall monitor.” Yes, if only the president would blow a whistle, the Scots and Catalans would end their centuries-old quest for independence!
Forget the Federal Reserve’s “taper,” Niall Ferguson tells us in the Wall Street Journal, the much greater danger is Washington’s “geopolitical taper.” He presents as evidence of Obama’s disastrous policies the fact that more people have died in the “Greater Middle East” under Obama than under George W. Bush. But there is a huge difference in the two cases. In the Bush years, the numbers were high because of the war in Iraq, a conflict initiated by the Bush administration. In the Obama years, the numbers are high because of the war in Syria, a conflict that the Obama administration has stayed out of. If this logic were to be followed, Bush is responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan and Congo during his presidency.
Most of the critiques were written before the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, so they tend to view Ukraine as another example of the weak and feckless Obama administration. Events in Ukraine actually illustrate how the world has changed and how U.S. leadership is better exercised in this new era.
(More here.)
TM Comment: The U.S. is now withdrawing from Afghanistan, the longest foreign war in our history. Through a perverse “mission creep,” the campaign to oust al Qaeda became a hostile occupation of Afghan territory.
Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us 6500 dead and 100,000 wounded; the financial costs are projected to total at least $5 trillion and could reach $7 trillion. Additionally, we have created or reconfigured at least 263 security organizations and increased annual intelligence spending by 250 percent.
Regardless of such costs, there is always a war party in the U.S. arguing for military action against somebody, currently Iran and Syria. They sometimes invoke pseudo-patriotic images like John Wayne, a WWII draft avoider who spent the rest of his career pretending he was a war hero. The interventions are invariably vital to our interests, sure to be short, and will end in victory.
In earlier times, the U.S. intervened in Nicaragua 13 times and on multiple occasions in Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama and China. We intervened in the Russian civil war, and landed troops in Yugoslavia and Turkey, Greece and the Philippines, Argentina and Chile, and invaded Granada in 1983. Our interventions led to dictators like Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas. In addition, we trained and supported Central American militaries and their death squads in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, sent military contingents to Somalia and Bosnia, attacked Serbia, and twice deployed troops to Lebanon to deal with the fall-out from Israel’s invasion.
Predictably, the super-patriots are claiming Obama’s return to sanity is capitulation.
We've seen the Neocons' militaristic policies. In fact, we've seen enough of them.
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