Obamas so selfie absorbed
Media meatheads are describing President Obamas plan for confronting Islamic State as a balance between doing nothing and all-out war. They remind me of an old friends insight that balance can be meaningless to the point of parody.
Said he: If I have one bare foot in scalding water and the other bare foot in ice water, then, on balance, Im comfortable.
Obamas balance in foreign policy is just as ridiculous, and a helluva lot more dangerous.
Recent events show a disturbing picture of the emerging world order he favors. It starts with bringing Iran in from the cold, a plan Obama has been working on since taking office in 2009.
His concessions to the mad mullahs nuclear program are alarming, but that is only a piece of his strategy. As national defense veteran Michael Doran writes in Mosaic magazine, Iran is key to Obamas thinking about the role of the United States in the world, and especially in the Middle East.
He argues persuasively that the president wants a grand bargain that would, in Obamas own words, integrate Iran into the international community and make it a very successful regional power. The president even suggested Iran, a Shia thugocracy, could help fight against Islamic State, the Sunni terrorist group that created a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria and is now expanding to Libya.
The ramifications of the presidents vision show how warped it is. It means, Doran writes, that we have accepted Irans ally, Syrian butcher Bashar Assad, remaining in power despite crossing Obamas red line of using chemical weapons. It means we wont contest Irans brutal control of Lebanon or its domination of the parts of Iraq not controlled by Islamic State.
But Iran wants more, and last week, one of its proxy armies took over the capital of Yemen. That led to the evacuation of the US Embassy and the humiliating order that our Marines disarm before they left the country on a commercial airliner. The surrender came months after Obama called his strategy in Yemen a success.
In reality, this is what failure looks like. Irans sphere of influence now reaches the tip of the Arabian peninsula and rattles our Gulf allies, especially Saudi Arabia, which vows to get its own nuclear weapon if Iran gets one.
As if that is not trouble enough, Vladimir Putin signed a peace plan with Europe, then promptly sent 50 more tanks into eastern Ukraine in an obvious annexation plot. He took Crimea last year, and nobody even talks about taking it back. Also, China is again tightening the screws on Hong Kong, demanding schools stop teaching critical thinking and current events.
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Obamas so selfie absorbed