America is getting blindsided: How our imperial arrogance is continuing to wreak havoc [View all]

[bemildred]

In the halcyon days of the Cold War, it was rare you saw a phrase like “White House surprised by Russians” in your morning paper. But recently taxpayers, who spend billions of dollars on our president’s situational awareness, learned he was surprised twice this week: first by Russia’s muscular advance into Syria and then by President Putin’s success at getting Iran, Iraq and the Syria to share intelligence with Russia on fighting ISIS.

How can this be? The brain trust that advises President Obama didn’t see the Putin gambit coming. As a consequence, President Obama had to take the world stage at the UN General Assembly armed only with grimaces and lame excuses for a failed U.S. counter-terror policy that has proliferated terror, left a trail of failed nation states behind and helped prompt the biggest refugee migration since World War II.

No doubt the Russians and Iranians have been up to their own destabilizing antics in the region, but for them the proximity of the ISIS dead zone is a lot closer than it is to us, less than the distance between Washington DC and Mexico City. There’s a conflagration in their neighborhood and the US does not seem able to do anything about it other than waste money, continue bombing and avoid putting boots on the ground.

And even bullies can tell the truth. So when Russian President Putin raised the example of the miserable status of places like Libya, where the U.S. and NATO took out Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, only to see the once-stable nation descend into a chaotic terrorist haven, President Obama had a poor rhetorical hand to play. “Even as we helped the Libyan people bring an end to the reign of a tyrant, our coalition could have and should have done more to fill a vacuum left behind,” explained President Obama. Let’s just call this the “Could’ve, Should’ve” foreign policy doctrine and put a bow on it — just make sure to watch it unfold from a safe distance.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/01/america_is_getting_blindsided_how_our_imperial_arrogance_is_continuing_to_wreak_havoc/