"What I know about foreign policy can be written on the head of a pin... With that said, here is my opinion" -Many
— @ForecasterEnten
Much of the reaction will take a day or so to develop. Meanwhile...
Jeffrey Goldberg:
Why does he get no credit for these achievements? He gets no acclaim as a terrorist hunter for two reasons. First, Republicans will not credit him with any achievements in this endeavor because they won’t credit him with any achievement ever, for anything. He could concoct a cure for Ebola in Sam Kass’s kitchen and conservatives would criticize him for wasting time on a disease that doesn’t affect Americans. Second, the left-leaning Democratic Party base is hesitant to tout his record in the terrorist-killing department because it is uncomfortable with the idea of their president as a drone-deploying killer. No love from the right or left means that attacks such as the one that eliminated the head of Somalia’s terrifying al-Shabab militant group received relatively little notice. But I think the record will show that Obama has focused U.S. efforts on combating al-Qaeda and al Qaeda-like groups in at least half a dozen countries in a way that his predecessor did not. (And as for his predecessor’s predecessor, well, he did virtually nothing to stop al-Qaeda from metastasizing into what it became by September 11, 2001.)
On the second issue—the safe removal, and subsequent destruction aboard a U.S. Navy ship, of 1,300 tons of chemical agents from the most dangerous country in the most dangerous region in the world—Obama gets no credit in part because of the awkward and stutter-step manner in which the removal was originally negotiated, and also because it is not in the nature of humans to credit a leader for averting a theoretical catastrophe.
But the catastrophe averted here was plausible, even predictable. Just answer the following question: As the U.S. moves closer to open confrontation with ISIS inside Syria, is it a good thing that ISIS, and like-minded groups, and the regime itself, have no access to vast storehouses of chemical agents?
I did not think it was possible to remove the bulk of Bashar al-Assad’s stockpile in conditions of war, and I did not think Assad would agree to part with any significant portion of his stockpile, which, of course, represented his ultimate regime-preservation weapon.
On the one hand, it would have been emotionally satisfying—ephemerally, at least—to see Obama enforce his self-drawn red line by bombing Assad’s palace. But bombing Assad’s palace, or other regime facilities, would not have led to the removal of his stockpile. There are consequences to Obama’s last-minute about-face on the subject of airstrikes, though I find implausible the idea that Vladimir Putin would not be doing what he is doing if Obama had appeared tougher on Syria.
The truth is that Assad gave up his chemical weapons in good measure because he saw Obama’s threat of airstrikes as credible. The U.S. still has the ability to deter.
And what does the world get out of the removal of these chemical agents? Here is Laura Holgate, the senior director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council: “By having these 1,300 tons out of there, we’ve massively simplified the remaining challenges of the ongoing conflict. We’ve just removed an ‘x’ factor.”
Long, but a good read.
WSJ:
President Barack Obama told the country Wednesday night that he wants to expand U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, launching what administration officials have described as a more “offensive phase” of the fight against Islamic State militants.
Here are some of the details as outlined by the White House and an explanation of what they mean.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Let's be clear about the threat, and let's hear from some voices not featured on the Sunday shows.
Guardian:
Hours before Barack Obama is to announce an expanded military campaign against Islamic State (Isis) militants, his senior homeland security official assessed that the organization poses no imminent danger to America at home.
“At present, we have no credible information that [Isis] is planning to attack the homeland of the United States,” Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson told a Manhattan audience on Wednesday.
Johnson is the latest in a string of top US officials to concede that the jihadist army currently in control of much of eastern Syria and northern and central Iraq is not targeting the US at present, despite beheading two captured American journalists.
Trevor Timm:
Did you know that the US government’s counterterrorism chief Matthew Olson said last week that there’s no “there’s no credible information” that the Islamic State (Isis) is planning an attack on America and that there’s “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States”? Or that, as the Associated Press reported, “The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the US homeland from the Islamic State militant group”?
Probably not, because as the nation barrels towards yet another war in the Middle East and President Obama prepares to address that nation on the “offensive phase” of his military plan Wednesday night, mainstream media pundits and the usual uber-hawk politicians are busy trying to out-hyperbole each other over the threat Isis poses to Americans. In the process, they’re all but ignoring any evidence to the contrary and the potential hole of blood and treasure into which they’re ready to drive this country all over again.
Juan Cole:
US hopes of enlisting Sunni “tribes” led by people like Ahmad Abu Risha are probably not very realistic. Sunni notables in the cities and ex-Baath officers need to be convinced to break with ISIL. One might ask where all the Iraq oil money has gone. With Brent crude mostly over $100 a barrel in recent years, and Iraq exporting 3 mn barrels a day or so, the government should be enormously wealthy. But Sunni Arabs complain of poverty, unemployment and no services or electricity. What’s wrong with this picture? Inefficiency and corruption are part of the story of the disaffection of the Sunnis in Iraq; and those faults are in the main US ally!
Giving close air support to Middle Eastern groups requires US special forces on the ground, to paint lasers on the targets. And if the campaign isn’t finished in 3 years, there will be pressure from Washington hawks to commit troops (there already is). Governments don’t like to be seen failing, and sometimes will double down in a gamble.
And voices who are heard more regularly...
NY Times:
The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.
But as President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be a yearslong military campaign against the militant group, American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East.
Dana Milbank:
There is agreement across the political spectrum on some of what Cheney said: that Obama has been disengaged and too hesitant to use military power. But Cheney is a singularly flawed critic, because the alternative he offers is war everywhere and always — and though there is support for taking on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, there is no appetite in the country, or even in the GOP, for Cheney’s alternative extreme. As if to underscore that point, Jim Wallis, an evangelical with a pacifist bent who called the Iraq war a “war based on lies,” was speaking in an adjoining conference room at the conservative think tank while Cheney gave his address — and the applause could be heard in the room where Cheney was speaking.
David Nakamura:
Obama is unlikely to describe his authorization of direct military action to defeat the Islamic State terror group as war and, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks, will emphasize the effort is “different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” To the contrary, in a prime-time address from the White House, he is expected to sharply contrast his use of targeted but limited American force with the large-scale air and ground invasions launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
But make no mistake: Obama’s escalation of airstrikes and additional U.S. personnel to help “degrade and destroy” the extremist Sunni group represents a major setback for a commander in chief whose early international appeal was built on a pledge to remove the United States from “permanent war footing.”