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Tag:

Diplomacy

From the Desk of Bob Barr

Iran brouhaha highlights total lack of foreign policy leadership

by Liberty Guard Author March 20, 2015
written by Liberty Guard Author

“Traitors,” screamed a tabloid New York newspaper. “Heroes,” proclaimed conservative pundits. Actually, the 47 Republican Senators who signed a March 9th “Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” are neither traitors nor heroes; and neither is the President or the leadership of the House of Representatives. In fact, the ridiculous name-calling generated by the “Open Letter” authored by Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — whose tenure in the Senate was all of about nine weeks when he circulated his letter — symbolizes the infantile depths to which the quality of American foreign policy has fallen in recent years. There simply is no leadership, anywhere.

Back in the day — let’s say during the Administration of Richard Nixon — we had presidents who, despite obvious flaws, understood politics among nations. In Nixon’s case, even his political enemies readily admitted he parlayed that expertise into widespread respect for the United States.

Secretaries of State, going back at least to the early days of the Cold War, were almost always highly respected men and women possessed of substantial academic and real-world credentials in international affairs. Whether Republican or Democrat, rarely were serious questions raised at home or abroad about their professional gravitas.

The caliber of those chosen to represent the United States at the highest level of foreign affairs reflected an understanding dating to our nation’s founding that America’s real and perceived position of leadership in the world really did matter. Yet, increasingly in recent years those heading the bureaucracy at “Foggy Bottom” are there because of politics, not diplomacy.

Similarly in the Congress, past leaders of both major political parties recognized the vital importance of placing representatives with a deep understanding of America’s position and interests in the world at the helm of key committees. Veteran members of the House and especially the Senate occupied leadership positions on the Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees of both houses.

Today, we simply have what we have.

We have a president who by all outward signs, neither understands nor cares about foreign affairs; a shallowness reflected in his diplomatic and national security teams. From the start in January 2009, this president has lurched from one ill-advised position to another; embracing policies that very often contradict themselves along the way.

First, Washington embraced the “Arab Spring” without even understanding what it was about; it just “sounded good.” We threw our long-time ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under the bus; only to be blindsided by the anti-West moves by the successor government headed by proponents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

One country to the west in Libya, this administration sat by while strongman Muammar Gaddafi dutifully complied with his promise to forsake and dismantle weapons of mass destruction; only to then throw him under the bus too when self-proclaimed “reformers” showed up and demanded aid and recognition from the West. Now, we are pariahs in that country; which has joined others in the region in descending into sectarian bloodletting with a pronounced anti-U.S. undertone. The 2012 Benghazi tragedy followed directly from our earlier naïve actions in that country.

And now we have Iran; a country far more complex in many ways than Iraq, Egypt, Syria or Libya. A country that has long-yearned to be counted among the ranks of nuclear powers, and is well on its way to achieving that goal. It is a country ruled since 1979 by fundamentally anti-American and anti-Israel religious zealots. And Obama has chosen to deal with the regime

Into the middle of this boiling political cauldron steps The Freshman — Sen. Cotton — who does not even occupy a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He audaciously drafts a letter to the leadership of Iran, in the midst of sensitive, ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Amazingly, Cotton was able to convince 46 of his Senate Republican colleagues — including some of its most senior members — to join him in this unprecedented move. Whether they all read the letter first — much less understood its message — is unclear.

Sure, the letter reflects the domestic political positions championed by the Republican grass roots; and yes, it goes over well at political events back home and in Tel Aviv. The letter even displays an accurate understanding of powers Congress possesses under our Constitution — powers the Senate and House often talk about but rarely act upon.

However, in terms of a responsible and timely way to assert that congressional power, it ranks about as high as the vision which Barack Obama and John Kerry bring to the negotiating table — ill-timed, ill-advised, and ill-prepared.

Until both houses of Congress and leaders of both parties once again elevate understanding of international relations above sound-bite politics, and until we have a president who actually cares about and understands international power politics, we’d all be better off if they simply stayed home and stayed quiet.

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Iran brouhaha highlights total lack of foreign policy leadership

March 20, 2015 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Obama’s Amateur-Hour Foreign Policy Endangers America And Our Allies

by Liberty Guard Author February 25, 2015
written by Liberty Guard Author

Shortly after the Iraqi city of Fallujah fell to the Islamic State (ISIS) in January 2014, President Obama was interviewed by The New Yorker. When asked about the loss of such an iconic city from the U.S. war in Iraq, Obama responded with his usual glibness: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” Less than six-months after he made those comments, Obama’s “jayvee team” would establish an Islamic “Caliphate” spanning two countries, with an estimated 31,000 fighters from all over the world pouring into its territory for a chance to die martyrs’ deaths while fighting the western armies of “Rome.”

Yet, even as ISIS grows in size and brutality, Obama and his Administration continue to harbor a fantasy world in which, to them, these horrendous acts of terrorists are on par with those committed here in America by Christians during the Jim Crow era;and fueled today in the global jihad not by religious zeal, but by poor economic conditions and anti-immigrant racism. This sophomoric view of the world is neither funny nor tolerable; it is in fact emboldening our adversaries from Moscow to Mosul, and from Havana to Beijing, with potentially devastating harm to the interests of the United States and our allies.

With few exceptions, Obama’s predecessors in the Oval Office navigated the complex and high-stakes arena of international diplomacy based on a sober assessment of the world as it is. Now, Obama and his advisors make decisions based on the world as they dream it to be; and, if reality happens to fall outside their tightly crafted narrative, it is either marginalized or dismissed outright.

This desperate attempt to shoehorn an increasingly unstable international environment into a situation in which Obama remains the stoic “Savior,” has turned the State Department into a sideshow, with spokespersons spouting gibberish that would be comical if not for the fact that these people represent the United States to the rest of the world.

In the tense standoff between Russia and Ukraine, then-State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki (who recently was promoted to the White House staff) tweeted a picture of herself holding a piece of paper with “#UnitedForUkraine” scrawled on it. The childish “diplomatic” gesture immediately prompted headlines such as, “Russia sends troops, Obama administration sends a selfie.” More recently, as ISIS leaders publicly execute Americans, Christians, homosexuals, and others it does not consider true believers, a State Department spokesperson suggested with a straight face a “root cause” for the growth of ISIS was a “lack of opportunity for jobs.”

As the White House tried to convince Americans that ISIS sprang-up out of Mesopotamia overnight – a fantasy that fit nicely with the reality that the Administration was utterly unprepared to deal the threat for many months — ISIS was very public about articulating its goals in the region; even publishing annual reports about its progress. In fact, it was Obama’s ill-advised and Hillary-backed intervention in Libya, sending that country tumbling into chaos, that ISIS found the foothold in the region it needed to expand.

“Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards,” writes Alan Kuperman, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism … Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and [ISIS].”

The reason the Obama Administration so badly bungled the Libya intervention is the same reason why State Department spokespeople continue to speak of the war with ISIS in the same terms it would use to explain drug addiction or inner-city poverty: It refuses to accept the world and the actors on the international stage cannot be controlled with political messaging and spin. Therefore, rather than admitting even basic truths about the challenges it faces — like Islamic terrorists are actually Islamicand adhere zealously to a “theology that must be understood to be combatted” — this Administration prefers to trumpet so-called intelligence reports focused on specters and boogeymen with which it feels more comfortable, such as domestic “right-wing sovereign citizen extremist groups.”

Obama’s “Amateur Hour” foreign policy has managed to both inject America blindly into action in the name of preventing terrorism, while at the same time marginalizing other legitimate terror threats. At this juncture, halfway through Obama’s second term, and with the Congress seeming to lack the backbone to force the Administration to remove its rose-colored glasses and forsake its trademark “hashtag” diplomacy substituting for true statesmanship, we and our allies will continue to play defense while ISIS and other terror groups flourish in the vacuum left by America’s exit as a true leader on the world stage.

February 25, 2015 0 comment
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Liberty Updates

Liberty Update – National Security

by Liberty Guard Author February 1, 2015
written by Liberty Guard Author
February 1, 2015 0 comment
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