What's Wrong With U.S. Foreign Policy?

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/bob-burnett/58210/whats-wrong-with-u-s-foreign-policy

What's Wrong With U.S. Foreign Policy?
Foreign Policy
by Bob Burnett | September 10, 2014 - 9:17am

Obama bashing has been one of the characteristics of the 2014 midterm election. For the last few months the president was accused of lacking foreign policy leadership. Republicans blamed Obama for deteriorating conditions in Iraq and Syria, implying the president is solely responsible for the bad news. What's wrong with U.S. foreign policy?

~snip~

The Bush administration justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq initially focused on short-term security issues: &quot remove) a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world." Later strategic interests were included: "to change the Middle East so as to deny support for militant Islam by pressuring or transforming the nations and transnational systems that support it." The security phase had detailed planning. The strategic phase made a weak attempt to introduce democracy to the region.

The U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated that the U.S., 70 years after World War II, continues to be effective at regime change; we know how to conduct military operations that decapitate enemy leadership. However, we were not effective creating a stable civil society; we were not able to "change the Middle East so as to deny support for militant Islam." (To the contrary, in many regions we made things worse.) At present, America is not able to inculcate democracy and nip terrorism in the bud.

This grim reality explains why Americans are unhappy with our foreign policy, especially the situation in the Middle East -- the death of the promise of "Arab Spring." In the minds of most Americans our foreign policy is based upon our use of overwhelming military power buttressed by the rationale that when we send in the marines we are paving the way for democracy.

[Adam051188]

1. nothing is wrong with it.

it does what it is designed to do. funnel american tax money to arms dealers who supply "freedom fighters" in afganistan, or iraq, or syria, or libia, or wherever, then use their propaganda networks and vague anecdotal "reasoning" to build support for a war to either assist or deter said "freedom fighters" at which point they may turn into "militants" if the easiest sales pitch to the public is that dropping bombs on the people we most recently supplied with weapons is more reasonable.

meanwhile the u.s. has a healthcare system that gets results on par with russia. our kids are the must undereducated in the developed world. we have the most billionaires in the world and the highest childhood poverty rate in the developed world. our cities are dumps. our infrastructure is from the 50's-60's. median wealth per adult...lol. turns out, when you look at facts and numbers instead of beliefs, we're actually not very good at running a country. median wealth for an adult in Australia is five times what it is in the u.s. isn't that incredible? who knew? only people who care about reality i guess. keep watching the news on your TV.

http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/06/us-median-wealth-only-28th-in-world.html