Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal was on Fox and Friends doing what people do on Fox and Friends: Bash President Obama and find ways to blame him for everything that goes wrong in the world. In today’s episode, she essentially blamed him for the terrorist attacks in Paris and said: "Obama is irrelevant... no one will look to him for wisdom...Europe will not look to Obama for leadership."
The underlying tenet to Peggy’s attacks on the President today is that President Obama is weak on terrorism, although nothing is further from the truth. Peggy is conveniently carrying the water for the GOP and Fox News of trying to set-up a false narrative designed to help the Republicans win the White House in 2016. And while doing so, she’s ignoring that the Bush Administration created ISIS/ISIL through its mismanagement of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq and the Bushies allowed al Quaeda to thrive due to its failure to nab Osama bin Laden. In Dubya’s own words, “ The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.”
Perhaps Peggy Noonan forgets that thanks to President Obama’s leadership bin Laden was finally brought to justice. And the President’s aggressive strategy for dismantling al Qaeda didn’t end with taking out bin Laden. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Steve Benen published June 17, 2015 on MSNBC.Com titled “The Scope of Obama’s Counter-Terrorism Successes” (www.msnbc.com/…):
NBC News had a helpful report yesterday on the frequency with which U.S. strikes have successfully targeted al Qaeda’s top leaders.
Since Navy SEALs killed [Osama bin Laden] in 2011, American drone strikes have taken out seven potential candidates to succeed him as the leader of what was once the most-feared terror gang.
The targeted attacks started within weeks of bin Laden’s death. Three al Qaeda higher-ups were killed in June, August and September of 2011, followed by another three in late 2012 and early 2013…. Now, the death of 38-year-old Wuhayshi – killed in a strike on Friday – is seen by American intelligence officials as a major blow to al Qaeda, which is struggling with decimated ranks and ideological competition from the Islamic State.
I’m reminded of this piece in The Atlantic last fall, when Jeffrey Goldberg, hardly a liberal, wrote, “Obama has become the greatest terrorist hunter in the history of the presidency.”
It’s a detail Republicans simply don’t know what to do with, so they ignore it and pretend the president is indifferent to matters of national security, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. While GOP officials and candidates continue to insist that what really matters is word-choice, Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy includes so many successes, they no longer generate much attention. Notice, for example, just how little chatter al-Wuhaysh’s death garnered yesterday.
There is, of course, an entirely different side of the debate. Yes, Republican rhetoric is divorced from reality. Yes, Obama has successfully targeted a wide variety of prominent terrorist leaders.
As for ISIL or ISIS, much of the current conservative uproar is based on the President saying the group was “contained” during an interview that aired Friday morning. Lost in the uproar is the proper context in which he said that. Here’s the full quote ( abcnews.go.com/...):
“From the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them," Obama told ABC on Thursday. "They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it -- they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain."
Also lost in the conservative uproar is the fact that the ISIL/ISIS terrorist leader known as “Jihadi John” is believed to have been killed by a U.S. air strike Thursday. But being willfully ignorant and focusing exclusively on anything they can make political hay on is what Republicans and their communications wing at Fox News do best.
In the world of reality that evades Fox News Nation, successes against ISIL/ISIS don’t stop there. Also this week, as reported by CBS News: In Iraq, Kurdish forces backed by U.S. airstrikes seized a strategic northern city. They pushed ISIL/ISIS fighters out of Sinjar. Islamic militants overran the area one year ago. A full report can be found at this link www.cbsnews.com/…
On Oct. 20, 2011--the day Gaddafi was taken out--a web site called RealDealTalk.Com published a list of 21 terrorist leaders squashed by the Obama Administration (realdealtalk.com/...).
As for Peggy Noonan’s assertion that European leaders won’t look to President Obama for leadership and support to fight terrorists, the last time I checked the United States was still one of the leaders of a 60-nation coalition and I didn’t hear French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron or any European leader echo her baseless remarks about President Obama being irrelevant. I’m certain they still value his judgement, leadership and support no matter what a book-pushing shill like Peggy Noonan and those of her ilk say in efforts to stir up resentment toward our President.
At the end of the day the tragedy in Paris makes it hard for anyone to see or celebrate any of the successes and progress being made against ISIS/ISIL, but as the President said July 6, 2015 USA Today story the U.S. military is making progress against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but more work remains to be done. "This will not be quick — this is a long-term campaign,” he said (www.usatoday.com/...).
As usual, the facts and the totality of a complex global situation are beyond the comprehension of the partisan rhetoric and scorn toward President Obama being put forward on Fox News. Republicans can say President Obama is weak and is failing against terrorism, but the truth doesn’t back up their scurrilous contentions. Time and again, President Obama has proven he knows what he’s doing when it comes to foreign policy choices (ie. Cuban thaw, Iran nuke deal, Chinese climate change accord and removal of Syria’s chemical weapons), I don’t have any reason to doubt his handling of ISIL/ISIS in spite of what the doubts and derisions of the Peggy Noonans of the world.
So….sorry Peggy Noonan. The truly irrelevant people (in the most final and morbid of ways) in 2015 are Osama Bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Jihadi John and countless other terrorist leaders snuffed out by the Obama Adminstration. I think that makes the President very successful and relevant in fight against global terrorism.