President Obama’s team of national
security advisers have a few bad poker hands they are in the process of
playing. The first regards all the trillions they have spent on National Security and the NSA yet not foreseeing the collapse and routing of the U.S.trained Iraq Army forces by Sunni jihadists, and second, the blind eye turned
toward the Ukraine by supporting Neo-Nazis whom just so happen to be conducting
ethnic cleansing among the Russian speaking populous of the East. Although
Obama has openly stated that his administration and national security staff has
been working continuously on options for dealing with ISIS, and that he has
proposed additional sanctions upon Russia, nothing has been done and nothing
has been effective.
First looking at Iraq, albeit our
problem began with President George W. Bush, Obama has done little to reduce
the blood shed that has been occurring in Iraq for the past two years and like
the mainstream news media, he and his administration have ignored all of the
chaos in the nation and placed it on the back burner, as if it was a done deal
and the war was over. This is one reason that the President was caught slipping
and leaves the question, was it that they did not see this as a possibility of
occurring, given how unstable the country has been since the U.S. appointed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki took over? Or was it that the US intelligence community didn’t see the threat coming from ISIS? Either way,
regardless of who is in the executive office, both are unacceptable. Moreover,
things were made worse when last year, President Obama openly and falsely
claimed and took credit for saying the war in Iraq was over, just as it was
when Bush made the claim a few months after he started the war and again in2008.
Based on this alone, one should ask how
can the U.S. administration install a friendly government in Iraq and but
cannot even get them to accept to extend an agreement or form an inclusive
government when you giving said nation billions annually? I know, defeats
reason. The Obama administration explicitly detailed that he wanted such but in
the same breath asserted they would scale back support involve if the Sadrists
were a significant player in any Iraqi government: all in congruence with his
desire to use both Iraq and forces on Syria at the forefront of his desire to
topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Maybe we would be better off asking why any
sensible person in leadership would commit more U.S. blood for a lost cause
that was previously lost. To do such in any form or fashion is an embarrassment
and exhibits that the administration’s policy was really no policy at all, but
instead one without specific and tangible aims or outcomes. Let’s be clear, in
a few days, the gains that America and coalition forces made over a decade of
occupation, resulting in nearly 5,000 American lives and $3 trillion, are gone
and we didn’t see it coming. Thus far, it is clear that the administration was
moving the Iraqis faster than they should have seeing it is clear the military
can’t function as a military.
But what is more troubling, is trying to
figure out why Washington selected Nouri al-Maliki, after all he is one of the
few Iraqi political leader who doesn’t have any clout, I mean, he doesn’t have
a militia like other Iraqi leaders, does he? The fact is that Maliki is dependent on Iran for his power and Iran is backing Syria, both of which in
many respects have been keeping him in power, I am sure Obama knew this, yet he
appointed him against all the desires his Syrian and Iranian foreign policy
wish to accomplish. The record shows that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with leaders of Arab countries in Saudi Arabia a few months backs in which all
party’s agreed that ISIS in Syria and Iraq was a real threat, but no plan were
developed on how to address these events.
And just like in Iran where Obama’s
foreign policy is out of sync with the realities in the region, the same
consistency is evident in the Ukraine. The entire world knows that Yanukovich’s
democratically elected government was removed by military force instigated by
right wing neo-Nazi and Neo fascist via U.S. and E.U urging. Yet, just like his
administration was supposedly caught by surprise at the rate in which the
well-armed and highly trained ISIS fighters took over Mosul, they said the same
in February, when it failed to foresee the events in Crimea. Likewise as we observed in Iraq and Syria,
where the rise of ISIS negate Obama’s claims of a happy ending to the war in
Iraq, the recent moves of Russia has proffered the same, moreover, it makes one
query how effective will his success be in Afghanistan since he will employ a
carbon-copy the of the same strategy for withdrawal there by 2016.
In the Ukraine, like Maliki at first,
President Obama considers Billionaire Petro Poroshenko’s victory a good thing.
Consequently, he immediately began bombing the Russia speaking regions of
Donetsk and Lugansk to deal with the so-called “terrorist” with the approval of
our Nobel Peace prize winning president. Even more peculiar is that through
this support, Obama has placed his administration in violation of the U.S. law
he has mentioned several times over the past six years that prohibits
financially aiding any coup installed government such as the case in Ukraine.
Think about it, the Obama administration didn’t see what happened in Egypt as a
coup, so the military aid to Egypt kept flowing to the tune of $1 billion plus\.
As it stands, the Obama administration
is in the midst of an extremely tenuous situation. The most significant is
ISIS: especially not knowing the group’s true strength and how to respond.
Particularly, the fact that the U.S. currently has NO intelligence on Abu Bakral Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who was
once held by the US in Camp Bucca Iraq (the Obama administration shut down the Bucca prison camp and released its prisoners, including Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in
2009).
Now in Iran, Syria, Iraq, India, Egypt and the
Ukraine, Russian foreign policy appears to be the lone consistent winner.
Although President Obama has stated he will invest $1 billion in stepping up
the US military presence in Eastern Europe based on the tension in the
Ukrainian, since March, the White House has approved more than $23 million in
security assistance to Ukraine and is now saying it will give Kiev an additional
$5 million aid. Meanwhile, China and Russia are in the midst of a massive Gold buying spree plus the deals with the nations mentioned above, makes any sanctions
mentioned by the present administration an effort in futility.
In all reality it was foolish for the
President to promise the impossible of ending a war in which his policy has
virtually flamed Sunni and Shiite sectarian violence. Then remains the question
many have yet to ask, why was such a vile person considered fit to be released
into the world, when times before at closings, administration’s would just
relocate such person to Gitmo? Yes the administrations have some cards it must
play and they may not produce a winning hand.
Bluffing and inconsistencies in foreign policy have seemed to put the
U.S. all over the map. One the one hand
we are aware that the Iraqi leadership is backing Syria against the U.S.
supported militants yet say little if anything about it, and on the other that
Maliki continues to implement repressive attacks on and against Sunni in Iraq.
In both Iraq and Ukraine, it may be best for the administration let things go
as they will and take an I.O.U., because America has messed things up enough
already in both regions.
